How #China unleashes surveillance against #ChinaProtests participants: one Chinese lawyer who's been offering legal assistance to protesters shared some concerning examples of China's use of technology to track, target and surveil protesters.
According to her, a few protesters in Guangzhou say the day after they were stopped by police and left their ID numbers with them, there were illegal attempts to log into their Telegram accounts even though their phones were with them when the attempts happened.
This not only happened to one person but several protesters who all joined the protest the day before and were all stopped by police and left their ID numbers with the police, which makes the lawyer thinks this isn't a coincidence.
Other protesters in #Beijing told the lawyer that they only stayed at the protest site for a bit and weren't confronted by the police on the day of the protest. However, they received calls from police the next day, summoning them to the police station for questioning.
They were summoned to the police station with the friends that they went to the protest together the day before, which made them wonder how the police knew they were together at the same place on the particular evening.
Friends of one protester told the lawyer that while the protester was summoned by the police, there were activities on the protester's Telegram account, raising suspicion among the protester's friends that the phone may not be in his control.
All 20 protesters that the lawyer has worked with said the first thing the police confiscated when they arrived at the police station was their phones. While police return the phones to some protesters when they were released, other protesters haven't gotten their phones back.
The lawyer told me that when comparing these protesters to the police equipped with technology, the protesters feel very powerless. They didn't know how the police obtained their numbers in some cases and they weren't sure if the police have copied all messages on ...
... their phones while they were being questioned.
@lokmantsui told me that the police can find out if particular phones were at a particular location at a particular time, including finding out if people were at a protest.
"Because China is a surveillance state with little regard for rule of law or human rights, this is not difficult for them," he said. "One fairly easy way is to go to the telecommunication company and ask them which phone number connected to which cell tower at what time."
"This can be imprecise and produce errors, but if your goal is to intimidate protesters, and not get conviction in court, then this would fit the bill," he added.
The lawyer told me that she thinks most protesters won't face any actual legal risks as they are mostly summoned and the police may collect evidence from them. Almost all were "educated" and threatened not to join similar protests again in the future.
Some have also been asked to write confessions. However, if there is sufficient evidence to suggest that particular protesters were the source of certain information that is disseminated, they could face criminal charges.
As for the lawyer personally, the group chat function and the function to share stuff with her friend circle have been disabled until December 15, and the local judicial bureau has reportedly tried to contact her since she began to provide legal assistance to protesters.
When asked if she was concerned about her license being revoked like other human rights lawyers in #China for handling sensitive cases, she said while she still worries about it, she thinks there is nothing wrong with her to offer some legal assistance with her power.
"I don't want to let the suffering or torture that those who spoke up for the rest of us have gone through be in vain. I hope this could lead to some policy changes and all I did was offer some legal assistance. It may not be of huge help."
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