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China Medicine

Chinese Officials Are Weaponizing COVID Health Tracker To Block Protests 74

Posted by BeauHD from the red-light-green-light dept.
Chinese bank depositors planning a protest about their frozen funds saw their health code mysteriously turn red and were stopped from traveling to the site of a rally, confirming fears that China's vast COVID-tracking system could be weaponized as a powerful tool to stifle dissent. Motherboard reports: A red health code designated the would-be protesters as suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients, limiting their movement and access to public transportation. Their rallies in the central Henan province this week were thwarted as some were forced into quarantine and others detained by police. A 38-year-old software engineer was among hundreds who could not access their savings at four rural banks since mid-April. She had planned to travel from her home in Jiangxi province to Zhengzhou, Henan's capital city, to join a group petition this week to demand her money back. But her health code turned from green to red shortly after she bought a train ticket on Sunday. She said a nucleic test for COVID she took the night before came back negative and her hometown has not reported any infection recently.

"Henan authorities targeted the health code of bank depositors in order to stop us from defending our rights," she told VICE World News, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid government reprisal. She eventually managed to reach Zhengzhou using her green health code on a different app, but was daunted by the sight of police officers out in force. More than 200 bank depositors from all over the country saw their health codes turned red over the past week, which effectively foiled a planned protest outside the Henan branch of China's banking regulator. Chinese activists and dissidents have reported similar experiences in the past, but the latest crackdown appears to be the most brazen example of how the authorities could exploit the supposed COVID-19 measure for political purposes.
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Chinese Officials Are Weaponizing COVID Health Tracker To Block Protests More

Chinese Officials Are Weaponizing COVID Health Tracker To Block Protests

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  • Inconceivable! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Friday June 17, 2022 @08:31PM (#62630168) Homepage

    Oh, wait... no.

    Exactly as expected.

    • I had thought that all protests about anything were strictly banned. That was the reason for the crack down on Fulun Gong, long before Xi.

      How is it they were going to a protest at all?

      As to using Covid, the Australian Victorian government used Covid as a great excuse to attack protesters in Melbourne a few months ago.

      • I think the crackdown on the Falun Gong began when the CCP realized the practitioners of this esoteric belief system could be marshaled as a sort of anti-government force. The protests were a reaction to the crackdown. Before that, the Falun Gong was largely indifferent to the government.

        • There were two phases. The first was merely intimidation by the CCP because they did not like having any organization that they did not control, with a bottom up structure.

          Then in 1999 the Falun Gong organized a silent protest in which some 10,000 assembled for a while at a government office and then left peacefully. That put the wind up the CCP and the full on persecution started.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          • I think there was even a phase 0, when the CCP thought the Falun Gong was just a wellness movement. This would be a bit similar to today's dancing grandmas [theguardian.com], except the Falun Gong's members were younger or at least more middle-aged, therefore a more dangerous group.

            • Indeed. Many CCP members subscirbed to Falun Gong befor 1999.

              I suspect that Xi keeps a wary eye on those Dancing Grandmas. If ever he got off side with them, they could be a powerful force. And there is some respect for age in China.

              Tradtionally, "square dancing" means 4 couples in a square. But The Guardian used it to mean dancing in a (town) square :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They have been doing it in the UK since pretty much the start of the lockdowns, so it was only a matter of time before China copied the idea.

      There was an infamous vigil for a woman raped and murdered by a cop, who claimed she was breaking COVID rules. The police violently broke up the vigil on COVID rule grounds as well.

    • Is it just me or does nobody else noticed the part that says that the banks are just taking people's savings and money and telling them that it's not there or they don't have an account or whatever the hell it is to the point where they have to travel across the country just to find out why they can't access their own damn money which they probably don't have very much of because they don't get paid crap and also the cost of living there is skyrocketing it sounds more like some greedy Bank Executives or wha

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      Yup. Government is doing sketchy shit with power. I'm SHOCKED, shocked I say! It baffles me that some people don't understand why some people oppose giving power to government regardless of how reasonable the excuse is.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      >Exactly as expected.

      wait a minute . . . are you saying that a communist regime asserting control over those who think and blocking them was something we could have anticipated???

      from the beloved dictatorship of the proletariat?

      say it isn't so . . .

  • The CCP turning good to evil should be expected (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sakuta ( 7459770 ) on Friday June 17, 2022 @08:38PM (#62630180)

    Do you finally now realize the danger of the CCP to everyone? They are leading the way to super and undefeatable 1984.

    Remember that the Chinese people are the first victims of the CCP.

    • Re:The CCP turning good to evil should be expected (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NicknameUnavailable ( 4134147 ) on Friday June 17, 2022 @09:39PM (#62630298)
      Tracking people was never good.
    • CCP is bad but Burgerland may try to give freedom to Chinese people and it worries me a lot.

    • Do you finally now realize the danger of the CCP to everyone?

      Even bevore the advent of tracking apps, in early days of Covid when tracking was still done by writing your name with pen & paper in a restaurant notebook, police in various European countries went along, collected said notebooks, and began sifting through the entries to solve petty crimes.

      Tracking based on misuse of methods and datasets collected for a different purpose isn't an invention of, or inherently related to, the CCP.

      Heck, you need to look no further than your own government for that. Google

      • Not new at all. IBM worked with the Nazis to compute old census records (and church/synagogue birth records) to start building lists of people to be sent to concentration camps. Who computed the original census records? IBM. Who automated the killing process in the camps? IBM. This was the same IBM that was running the census in the US and elsewhere. Itâ(TM)s why I am frightened of any mass surveillance. It doesnâ(TM)t matter if itâ(TM)s collected for benign reasons (public health, advertisi
  • They're already losing control in Shanghai.

    Now that they're openly abusing the COVID tracker for non-COVID purposes, the people will no longer comply when it is genuinely about COVID.

    Great work, dipshits.

  • Sign me up (Score:3)

    by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Friday June 17, 2022 @08:50PM (#62630212)

    I definitely better knowing the West would never do this

  • Well, except Rep Swalwell(CA) and all the Administrators and Professors they own at US Universities.

  • If you live in China, convert all your money to crypto quickly. Then head for the nearest bus/plane (assuming you still can???) and GTFO of that hell hole. Convert your currency back to your newly chosen refuge country. (This assumes you can find a new country that doesn't have extradition back to China for free speech charges.)

    • Isn't crypto banned there now? There may be blocks at the banks to prevent this. I recall hearing just cashing out to regular USD was difficult.

    • onvert all your money to crypto quickly.

      Sure, why not? Pay $10-15 for any transaction, wait a minimum 10-30 minutes for it to get validated (or a few days, who knows), and if you ever in your life even so much as buy a dim sum at the wrong restaurant and they link your wallet ID to your real name, they'll reconstruct all your transaction history going back to the early 1800s or so; because, by definition, it's all there In. The. Fucking. Ledger.

      I wonder how people are not storming to cryptocurrencies as we speak. /s

      • Use crypto with the lowest volatility. (I know there is some with every single one.) Also use the one with the lowest transaction time. Trade your China money for crypto as a person to person trade. Yes, this will eat into your money. But, better this than ALL of your money "turned off" at the whim of the government.

        • Use crypto with the lowest volatility. (I know there is some with every single one.) Also use the one with the lowest transaction time.

          So, which one would be that, and how low are the theoretical and de-facto transaction times today?

          Trade your China money for crypto as a person to person trade.

          That's the one thing cryptocurrencies are the least fit for. It begins with the ledger, which with Bitcoin apparently already is large enough to not fit on typical devices you'd be comfortable carrying everywhere with you. Don't know about others, but seriously ask 1 bn people to use it for "daily transactions" and see what happens.

          Cryotpcoins fulfill one scope only: they're a theoretical exercise to show that

  • Of course, authoritarian assholes never understand that misuse of emergency mechanisms always leads to them not working anymore in the longer run. One of the reasons why any authoritarian regime universally assures a poor population and a place in the 2nd or 3rd world longer term.

  • I'm sure this comes to a shock to everyone. A government abusing citizen tracking measures, how could anyone have known? BTW, don't fool yourself thinking that this is something specific to the Chinese government. Your own government, regardless where you live, will do the same thing if it can.

  • Who could have guessed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Saturday June 18, 2022 @05:38AM (#62630892)
    The answer isn't that difficult in this case. Everyone who paid attention to history ought to have guessed that this was a highly likely outcome.

    And it could also happen elsewhere. Do not fall into the folly of thinking that it can't possibly happen to you, where you live.


    For example with how often my own politicians here in Germany tried to shove blanket surveillance down the throat of the country, and we could only hope for the separation of powers to do its job with the judicial system ruling legislation like that as unconstitutional, any remaining trust in this regard is long gone already.

  • "Come on, man! China's not so bad!" -- Hollywood, the NBA, and US manufacturing firms.

  • SAME as in Canada (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BardBollocks ( 1231500 ) on Saturday June 18, 2022 @10:15AM (#62631306)

    We had the EXACT same abuse of Covid tracking apps against Canadian protestors.

  • They're learning from America.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Evidence, please. America's system isn't perfect, but it has checks and balances due to having 3 branches of gov't and a competitive political system where politicians have an incentive to rat other politicians out when they cheat. China largely lacks that. What Xi says goes, evil or not.

  • The government that governs least governs best.

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