<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Associated Press/ Noah Berger</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Emerging tech is making it more efficient and inexpensive for police across the country to scale up their surveillance operations.</li><li><a href="https://businessinsider.com/category/drones">Drones</a>, <a href="https://businessinsider.com/category/facial-recognition">facial recognition</a>, and algorithm-driven policing are a few of the many technologies aiding police operations.</li><li>Human rights advocates have raised the alarm about new policing technologies, highlighting their potential threats to privacy, free speech, and due process.</li><li><a href="https://businessinsider.com/">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul><p>Emerging technology is giving police departments new ways to track suspects and head off possible crimes. It's also rapidly expanding the scope of police surveillance of civilians.</p><p>Police across the country are using tech to widen the scope of people and platforms that they monitor. This surveillance is rarely publicized given the sensitive nature of police investigations, but details of police tactics have regularly surfaced through lawsuits, public records disclosures, and success stories touted by police departments as examples of successful crime prevention.</p><p>Human rights advocates have raised the alarm about the acceleration of police surveillance using new technology. A <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/new-york-city-police-department-surveillance-technology">report published by the Brennan Center for Justice</a> this week compiles tactics used by the New York Police Department, highlighting their potential threats to privacy, free speech, and due process.</p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-hiring-tools-biased-as-humans-experts-warn-2019-10" data-analytics-position="1">AI could be the key to ending discrimination in hiring, but experts warn it can be just as biased as humans</a></em></p><p>While this technology is new, it's already widely used across the US. Databases of people's faces compiled by local police departments now contain over half of American adults, according to a study by researchers at <a href="http://www.perpetuallineup.org/">Georgetown</a>.</p><p>Some cities have begun to take action to regulate police use of technology for surveillance. San Francisco <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-bans-facial-recognition-software-by-police-2019-5?IR=T&amp;__s=abutgqgfq3qtwvi5gq42">became the first city to ban the use of facial recognition software by police</a> in May, and the New York City Council is <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/public-oversight-surveillance-technology-post-act-resource-page">currently weighing a bill</a> to force the NYPD to publicly disclose their tactics involving surveillance technology.</p><p>But in the absence of such regulation, police tactics are largely opaque, and there isn't much court precedent for how transparent police departments are obligated to be regarding their surveillance methods.</p><p>Here's what we do know about how police departments across the US are using technology for surveillance.</p>

How police are using technology like drones and facial recognition to track people across the US

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The top US <keyword id="12538255" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="counterintelligence" source="Orion">counterintelligence</keyword> agency recently published a list of five tech sectors it says are vital to US interests.</li><li>Those sectors are also vulnerable to adversaries, according to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.</li></ul><p>The US's top counterintelligence and security agency recently published a list of five technology sectors vital to US national and economic security that it says are vulnerable to malicious actors and adversaries.</p><p>According to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, those <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/SafeguardingOurFuture/FINAL_NCSC_Emerging%20Technologies_Factsheet_10_22_2021.pdf" target="_top">five prized sectors</a> are <keyword id="11896615" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="artificial-intelligence" source="Orion">artificial intelligence</keyword>, bioeconomy, autonomous systems, quantum information science and technology, and semiconductors.</p><p>"These sectors produce technologies that may determine whether America remains the world's leading superpower or is eclipsed by strategic competitors in the next few years," the NCSC says.</p><p>Although the threat mainly comes from near-peer adversaries, such as <keyword id="11892748" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="china" source="Orion">China</keyword> and <keyword id="11894337" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="russia" source="Orion">Russia</keyword>, it isn't limited to those countries. In addition to publishing the list, the US intelligence community is contacting private industry with advice and training to protect US national security and the US's competitive advantages.</p><h2>Artificial intelligence</h2><div type="image" title="artificial intelligence robot" height="2986" width="4479" msid="87720058" hostid="261"></div><p>Artificial intelligence is a constellation of technologies that demonstrate cognition and creative problem-solving, essentially enabling machines to perform the tasks of humans.</p><p>Uses for AI range from narrow applications designed to solve specific problems to broad applications, such as Artificial General Intelligence, that have the potential to match or even exceed the understanding and learning abilities of humans.</p><p>Artificial intelligence also has many military applications. The F-35 stealth fighter jet relies heavily on artificial intelligence for many of its functions. Compromising that technology could undermine or negate many of the jet's capabilities.</p><p>Artificial intelligence is also key to bulk data collection. The NSA, for example, uses it to quickly process and help analyze the immense amount of data it collects daily.</p><h2>Quantum information science and technology</h2><div type="image" title="quantum computing google" height="1177" width="1980" msid="87720059" hostid="261"></div><p>This technology uses the fundamental properties of matter to create new information technologies. For example, quantum computers use atoms and photons to accelerate some kinds of problem-solving.</p><p>Quantum-related technology has been used in the development of semiconductor microelectronics, the global positioning system, and magnetic resonance imaging.</p><p>Quantum technology could also have a critical impact on cryptography, or the encryption and decryption of communications. Were China to gain an advantage in quantum, it could target the essential encrypted communications of the US military, intelligence agencies, and private sector.</p><p>"In short, whoever wins the race for <keyword id="11901318" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="quantum-computing" source="Orion">quantum computing</keyword> supremacy could potentially compromise the communications of others," the NCSC states.</p><h2>Bioeconomy</h2><div type="image" title="biotechnology lab" height="3270" width="5448" msid="87720060" hostid="261"></div><p>Bioeconomy is economic activity related to and driven by research and innovation in <keyword id="12538257" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="biotechnology" source="Orion">biotechnology</keyword>.</p><p>The US bioeconomy improves many aspects of daily life, such as food and healthcare. It can also present a serious threat to national security and even humanity.</p><p>China is aggressively collecting domestic and foreign DNA material to gain an advantage in biotechnology and for more sinister reasons. The uniqueness of DNA makes it virtually impossible for a person or group to hide from an oppressive surveillance state like China.</p><p>Genomic technology that is designed to treat diseases can also be used against specific individuals or whole populations.</p><h2>Semiconductors</h2><div type="image" title="FILE PHOTO - A researcher plants a semiconductor on an interface board during a research work to design and develop a semiconductor product at Tsinghua Unigroup research centre in Beijing, China, February 29, 2016.  REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon" height="2400" width="3600" msid="87720061" hostid="261"></div><p>These small pieces of technology have become essential to most aspects of modern life, powering military technology such as satellites and stealth fighter jet and consumer products integral to everyday activity, such as TV and toasters.</p><p>The lighter, faster, and cheaper a semiconductor is, the better it is, and global nature of the semiconductor supply chain raises challenges to ensuring steady access for the US, which is reliant on Taiwan and China for most of those chips.</p><p>Adversaries have targeted the US semiconductor industry, draining talent and resources, and future attacks on that supply chain could further undermine the US economy.</p><p>"Since semiconductors are such key components, the fragile supply chain for semiconductors puts virtually every sector of the economy at risk of disruption," the NCSC says.</p><h2>Autonomous Systems</h2><div type="image" title="Navy MQ-8B Fire Scout drone helicopter" height="1429" width="2000" msid="87720063" hostid="261"></div><p>Unmanned systems perform tasks without or with limited human intervention or control, though many of them, such as remotely piloted aircraft or unmanned undersea vehicles, require some human involvement.</p><p>Such systems can improve productivity and safety for humans, but those systems' reliance on software, computing, and connectivity creates opportunities for malicious cyberattacks against them. They're also vulnerable to supply-chain disruptions.</p><p>Foreign and malicious actors can also target autonomous systems for intelligence gathering, using malicious software to compromise them.</p><h2>Beijing and Moscow</h2><div type="image" title="putin xi" height="1956" width="3000" msid="87720064" hostid="261"></div><p>China and Russia are the main threats to the above five tech sectors.</p><p>Beijing seeks global leadership in those and other technologies by 2030, and has pursued that goal through several avenues, including legal means and outright theft. The Kremlin also views the development of advanced science and technology as national security and strategic priority.</p><p>Both countries employ various methods to get their hands on such technologies, including operations by their intelligence services, investments in private companies, promotion of academic collaboration and research partnerships, and luring top talent.</p><p>A transformation in intelligence collection is driving Beijing's and Moscow's targeting of these five sectors. During the Cold War, adversary intelligence agencies went after classified military and intelligence secrets, but now they have shifted toward the private sector.</p><p>"If you look back 20 years ago, what we were most concerned about was intelligence services targeting the US government for classified information or targeting DOD technologies," Mike Orlando, acting director of the NCSC, said in an <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/foreign-espionage-threats-u-s-intelligence-matters-podcast/" target="_top">interview</a> earlier this year.</p><p>"What we've seen over the last 20 years is the shift to private-sector intellectual-property research and development, particularly by China, who has been the most egregious one in stealing those technologies," Orlando added.</p><p><em>Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.</em></p>

5 kinds of technology that the US's top spy catchers say rivals are gaining an edge in

<p class="source"><span>AP photo</span></p><p class="caption">Pakistani businessman Mirza Imran Baig shows a picture with his Uighur wife, Malika Mamiti, outside the Pakistani embassy in Beijing. Mamiti, was sent to a political-indoctrination camp after returning to China's far west Xinjiang region in May 2017, Baig said. Scores of Pakistani men whose Muslim Uighur wives have disappeared into internment camps in China feel helpless, fighting a wall of silence as they struggle to reunite their families.</p><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>The detention camps where the Chinese government has interned more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs serves a dual purpose.</strong></li><li><strong>It not only oppresses what the Chinese government considers a troublesome minority on its western frontier but also serves as a lab for the development of surveillance technology by Chinese companies.</strong></li><li><strong>China must export these tools as part of its plan to transform its economy into a world leader in technological development.</strong></li><li><strong>"It's not unusual that colonies on the periphery become laboratories of surveillance and control that are then applied elsewhere," Philip Thai, a historian of modern China at Northeastern University, said. "They're doing a lot of testing in an area that is remote and against a people who are not as politically organized or connected."</strong></li></ul><p>It is important to understand what's happening in Xinjiang, the far-flung province where the Chinese Communist Party has interned <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/world/asia/china-muslim-xinjiang.html">over 1 million</a> Muslim Uighurs and morphed the region into a dystopia of surveillance and terror.</p><p>Because to fulfill its economic promises, China must export its methods of repression in Xinjiang to us, the rest of the world.</p><p>This is part and parcel of the Chinese government's plan to grow its economy out of debt while evolving it from the world's manufacturing hub to a leader in technological development, a plan called <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/made-in-china-2025-the-industrial-plan-that-china-doesnt-want-anyone-talking-about/">"Made in China 2025."</a></p><p>"To go up the value chain, China has to own the tech that is the tech of the future, so AI, surveillance," Philip Thai, a historian of modern China at Northeastern University, said. "China believes fields like this could help it climb the value chain so it can reap the benefit from exporting these technologies instead of making the lower end and having foreign companies captures most of the gains."</p><p>Enter Xinjiang. In part to achieve the dual aims of technological development and a more ideal Chinese society, Xi Jinping's China has turned the region into a testing ground for a dizzying suite of surveillance tools tailor made for use by authoritarian governments.</p><p>There are algorithms that predict an individual's activity, from the benign to the dangerous. There's a database that draws from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html">68 billion records,</a> making the FBI's database of 19 million look like child's play. And of course there's facial-recognition technology. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/business/china-dna-uighurs-xinjiang.html">According to The New York Times</a>, Chinese scientists have been gathering blood samples from Uighurs to find a way to map a person's face from their DNA.</p><p>To grow profits and ensure technological perfection, this technology must leave China.</p><p>The facial recognition technology, for example, must be tested on different kinds of faces. That is why CloudWalk - a facial-recognition company used in Xinjiang - signed a <a href="http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1097747.shtml">"strategic cooperation"</a> deal with the Zimbabwean government. It needs new kinds of faces so that it can learn to recognize different kinds of people.</p><p>The push to develop this kind of technology has become more imperative as the Chinese economy has slowed in recent years. Sectors like manufacturing and heavy industry that used to drive its economy are declining and laden with debt, so the government needs new sources of growth to continue to power the Chinese economic miracle.</p><p>And of course time continues to march on to <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/made-in-china-2025-the-industrial-plan-that-china-doesnt-want-anyone-talking-about/">"Made in China 2025"</a> - the year China planned to relaunch itself to the world as a technological juggernaut. If it does it will be, in part, on the back of scientific discovery made through oppression.</p><p class="source"><span>AP Photo</span></p><p class="caption">Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center in Artux in western China's Xinjiang region.</p><h2>Old, new, and imperative</h2><p>In some ways, what's happening in Xinjiang is a throwback to the terrors of Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong. Mao believed the CCP could mold people into the perfect citizen, that they could be "reeducated" in labor camps.</p><p>Xi Jinping has given this idea a new life, but there are two key ways the new brand of horror is unlike anything China has seen in the 20th and 21st centuries.</p><p>For one thing, Xi's violence racially driven. Mao believed that CCP should avoid "Han chauvinism," the repression of China's racial minorities by its Han Chinese ethnic majority. Xi doesn't see it that way. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/xi-jinping-china-reform-gorbachev-mao">He's obsessed with the fall of the USSR</a> and, according to Thai, believes that the kind of diversity Mao borrowed from that erstwhile empire helped contribute its downfall. Xi's understanding of the ideal Chinese citizen demands more homogeneity, more secularism.</p><p>Put that racism together with the other new feature of Xi's violence - an economic imperative to develop surveillance technology as rapidly as possible - and you have what James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University, called "machine-learning-powered discrimination."</p><p>"Xi stopped 'hiding his lamp and biding his time' too soon," Millward said quoting a proverb about China's gradual, quiet ascendance to power. "Xinjiang makes China 2025 look like 'Black Mirror.' It has tainted the Chinese technological brand."</p><p><a href="https://97da3d29-d157-40bc-9f03-6b6ab7c8dd7f.filesusr.com/ugd/183fcc_adf060e8d31b466d9e926260ad070561.pdf">Research by Victor Shih</a>, a professor of political economy at the University of California, shows that in the past two years, the Chinese Communist Party all but stopped meeting about reforming China's massive state-owned enterprises, something advanced economies - and especially the Trump administration - have been pushing for years. Instead the government is focused on marshaling the resources of the state to achieve specific political and economic aims. And what's happened in Xinjiang figures into those aims.</p><p>"A decade ago the financial system threw resources at state firms so that they could generate growth," Dinny McMahon, a researcher at the Paulson Institute, a think tank dedicated to US-China relations, told Business Insider.</p><p>"Today, state firms can still access financial resources, but they're expected to generate growth in ways that serve the national interest (i.e., by moving up the value-added chain and into tech), and by ensuring their internal working culture is politically correct. The role of state companies is now as much about the Party's control over society as much as it is about the structure of the economy."</p><p>In these ways, what's happening in Xinjiang is a two-pronged solution for what Xi believes allies China. It is a fix for a lack of social cohesion, and it's a way to secure economic advancement and global leadership with Chinese Communist Party characteristics.</p><h2>A surveillance iron curtain</h2><p>Back in 2018 Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary of the United States and founder of the Paulson Institute, gave a speech warning that the US and China - through their various tit for tats - could accidentally find themselves behind an "economic iron curtain." The world once again, he said, is in danger of dividing itself in two.</p><p>A year later he <a href="https://www.paulsoninstitute.org/press_release/remarks-by-henry-m-paulson-jr-on-the-risks-of-an-economic-iron-curtain/">reprised his speech</a>, saying that the danger of this economic iron curtain developing is even more acute, especially along the lines of technology.</p><p>"Some in the United States now advocate a Cold War-style technology denial regime," he said. "And this is partly because of a growing consensus that China has been using policies and strategies that foster the indigenous development of high technology to set its own standards and, ultimately, pursue self-reliance."</p><p>Paulson is right, in part. There are some in Washington who bristle at the idea of Chinese self-reliance, and they should be more focused on US technological development instead.</p><p>On the other hand, Paulson's speech is incomplete. In it, he made no mention of surveillance or Xinjiang, of repression as a means of technological advancement. He mentions the Western value of openness, but not the Western value of human rights.</p><p>Failing to mention those values over-simplifies technological competition between US and China in this moment. And it risks allowing the planet to divide itself behind a surveillance iron curtain, creating a world where some people have freedom from technological weapons of mass surveillance and some do not.</p><p>If we're going to acknowledge what's happening in Xinjiang, we have to acknowledge it's a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/business/china-dna-uighurs-xinjiang.html">testing ground for those kinds of weapons</a> and it's China's aim to enrich itself by unleashing them on the world.</p><p class="tagline">This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Insider.</p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ocean-spray-harvests-220-billion-cranberries-a-year-2018-11">How Ocean Spray cranberries go from the bog to your Thanksgiving table</a></h3>

China's next gambit to save its economy will export dystopia worldwide

<ul class="summary-list"><li>In 2020, <keyword id="6355118" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="technology">technology</keyword>'s true impact on society was exposed, a new <keyword id="456907" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mozilla-Foundation">Mozilla Foundation</keyword> report argues.</li><li>It examined how tech shaped debates over <keyword id="9362929" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Racial-Justice">racial justice</keyword>, <keyword id="1553041" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="labor-rights">labor rights</keyword>, and corporate accountability.</li><li>In 2021, companies will face pressure to build "responsible" tech, Mozilla's president told Insider.</li></ul><p>Technology and society have always been closely intertwined - from Goryeo dynasty printing presses spreading new ideas across the globe more than 700 years ago, to <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/the-invention-of-movable-metal-type-goryeo-technology-and-wisdom-cheongju-early-printing-museum/jQLywilonG6kIg?hl=en">Google's search engine</a> helping people find those ideas today.</p><p>But 2020 was different.</p><p>"This past year, more than ever, human health was intrinsically tied to <keyword id="10695932" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="internet-health">internet health</keyword>," argues a new report from the <a href="https://2020.internethealthreport.org/">Mozilla Foundation</a> - a nonprofit organization whose privacy-focused Firefox browser was built largely as an antidote to Google.</p><p>"Technology and society smashed together in a head-on collision" last year, Mozilla Foundation president Mark Surman told Insider. "It was impossible for anybody to ignore."</p><p>Mozilla's report focused on three areas where technology collided with major social issues: racial justice, labor rights, and social media companies' lack of <keyword id="6434802" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="transparency">transparency</keyword> and accountability.</p><h2>"Technology has never been colorblind"</h2><p>"The internet appears predominantly White and US-centric by default," <a href="https://2020.internethealthreport.org/spotlights/racial-justice-decode-the-default/">Mozilla's report</a> said, because it's mostly built by - and for -  "software developers, managers, and executives of technology companies who are rarely diverse in terms of race, ethnicity or gender."</p><p>Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-survey-divide-between-high-low-poverty-schools-in-pandemic-2020-7?r=ts-sub">digital divide</a> as those without home internet access fell behind during online learning - hitting <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/16/as-schools-close-due-to-the-coronavirus-some-u-s-students-face-a-digital-homework-gap/">Black and Latinx students hardest</a>. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-net-worth-explodes-in-2020-chart-2020-1?r=ts-sub">Amazon's overwhelmingly White executives</a> raked in record compensation as e-commerce sales soared, while its disproportionately <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/every-company-that-was-sued-discrimination-and-harassment-lawsuits-2020-2021-?r=ts-sub">Black and Hispanic frontline workers</a> faced dangerous working conditions with low pay and few benefits.</p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/high-speed-internet-access-obstacle-to-fix-american-economy-2020-4?r=ts-sub">Unequal access to high-speed internet could be the biggest obstacle to getting the American economy back on track</a></em></p><p>George Floyd's death ignited nationwide <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-lives-matter-6-disputed-police-tactics-highlighted-by-protests-2020-9?r=ts-sub">protests against police brutality</a>, social media documented that very brutality - which in turn enabled <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/blueleaks-how-cops-tracked-george-floyd-protesters-on-social-media-2020-6?r=ts-sub">police to surveil protesters</a>. Companies like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/activists-protest-palantir-across-the-us-over-its-ice-contracts-2020-9">Palantir</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-brad-smith-facial-recognition-police-departments-2020-6?r=ts-sub">Microsoft</a> that supply the government with surveillance technology faced backlash from employees who saw them as complicit in racist immigration and policing policies.</p><p>But tech's most powerful figures weren't always receptive to such criticisms.</p><p>Amazon's top executives deliberately used a racist stereotype to discredit a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-memo-reveals-amazon-reportedly-led-pr-campaign-against-worker-2020-?r=ts-sub">Black whistleblower</a>. Google ousted a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-googles-firing-of-a-top-ai-ethicist-timnit-gebru-2020-12?r=ts-sub">Black AI ethics researcher</a> who had raised alarms over how the company - and its products - treated minorities. Facebook all but ignored a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerberg-facebook-not-gonna-change-due-to-advertising-boycott-report-2020-7?r=ts-sub">massive advertiser boycott</a> over hate speech on its platform and rejected many changes proposed by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sheryl-sandberg-facebook-wont-follow-all-civil-rights-audit-recommendations-2020-7?r=ts-sub">independent civil rights auditors</a>.</p><p>"Since the beginning of the internet, calling out racial inequities of data and algorithms means facing denials and backlash," Mozilla's report said, referencing an effort in 2008 to build a <a href="https://medium.com/@arnoldbrown/blackbird-in-the-coal-mine-are-technology-platforms-stifling-black-community-1ce25efdcf83">racially inclusive web browser</a> that received even worse backlash.</p><p>Still, the report argued: "The internet can help tip the balance to be racially just through the efforts of many people to rethink systems, question powerful institutions, and develop community focused alternatives."</p><h2>"Data rights are labor rights"</h2><p>Even before the pandemic, a third of Americans had used ride-hailing apps like <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/04/more-americans-are-using-ride-hailing-apps/">Uber or Lyft</a>, and lockdown orders pushed more people to take advantage of delivery services like DoorDash, Grubhub, Instacart, Target-owned Shipt, and Amazon Flex (which also delivers Whole Foods groceries).</p><p>Globally, those apps are powered by an estimated <a href="https://fair.work/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2020/06/COVID19-Report-Final.pdf">50 million "gig" workers</a>: contractors who don't receive benefits like healthcare, paid sick and parental leave, and labor protections - and whose "bosses" are opaque algorithms that deny them access to and control over the data responsible for their livelihoods.</p><p><strong><em>Read more:</em> </strong><em><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/proposition-22-faq-impact-uber-lyft-instacart-doordash-2020-1?r=ts-sub">California voters approved Proposition 22, keeping ride-share and food delivery drivers as contractors - here's what that means for companies like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and their workers</a></em></p><p>Mozilla's report highlighted how gig companies' ability to withhold data - from workers, regulators and, at times, even the legal system - creates a power imbalance that allows them to exploit gig workers. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-class-action-lawsuit-california-prop-22-ab5-driver-pay-2021-1?r=ts-sub">Uber, Lyft</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-25-million-settlement-lawsuit-tipping-model-2020-11?r=ts-sub">DoorDash</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/grubhub-uber-eats-postmates-third-party-food-delivery-is-broken-2020-5?r=ts-sub">Grubhub</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/instacart-shoppers-threaten-boycott-claim-lower-pay-2018-12?r=ts-sub">Instacart</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/target-owned-shipt-workers-are-striking-over-pay-algorithm-2020-10?r=ts-sub">Target</a>, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-flex-delivery-drivers-settlement-withholding-tips-ftc-charges-2021-?r=ts-sub">Amazon</a> have all been accused of using complex algorithmic pay models to obscure wage theft.</p><p>In response, gig workers are beginning to join forces to advocate for more control over their personal data and their algorithmic bosses, which they plan to use to hold companies accountable and push for <a href="https://2020.internethealthreport.org/spotlights/labor-rights-unlock-data-power/">better pay and working conditions</a>, according to Mozilla.</p><p>"Data rights are labor rights, especially when it comes to the platforms of the gig economy. Leveraging data for the collective good is essential for the future of work and internet health," the report said.</p><h2>"Holding social media companies responsible"</h2><p>Elections brought <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/misinformation-fell-73-after-trump-was-banned-across-social-media-2021-1?r=ts-sub">more waves of misinformation</a> in 2020, and as companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Parler struggled to thread the needle between protecting free speech and preventing harm to their users and society, extremists used their <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/plans-to-storm-the-capitol-circulated-on-social-media-2021-?r=ts-sub">platforms to plan a violent coup</a> that left five dead.</p><p>Under public pressure, social media companies eventually decided to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-trump-bans-from-twitter-facebook-dont-violate-first-amendment-2021-1?r=ts-sub">permanently ban President Donald Trump</a>, who frequently helped propagate much of the disinformation, but observers - outside and within those social media platforms - wondered how the companies would tackle equally thorny <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-leaked-memo-2018-us-elections-millions-fake-followers-reactions-2020-9?r=ts-sub">problems around the world</a> and whether there's enough of a check on their growing power.</p><p>"Does it mean platforms will now step up and take greater responsibility?" the report asked. "Without more meaningful transparency and accountability around both human and algorithmic decisions by platforms, probably not - and certainly not everywhere in the world."</p><p>The report discussed Facebook's role in automatically censoring posts from anti-police-brutality protesters during the <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqeyg/facebook-is-censoring-protests-against-police-violence-in-nigeria">#EndSARS</a> demonstrations in Nigeria, and criticisms of the company's ad library - a tool that Facebook bills as evidence of its transparency, but which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-stopping-nyu-researchers-examining-political-ad-targeting-2020-1?r=ts-sub">researchers argue proves the opposite</a>.</p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/top-tech-policy-people-washington-lobbyists-google-facebook-amazon-twitter-2020-?r=ts-sub">Big Tech is in the hot seat in Washington. Here are the 19 most influential people shaping policy for the industry from the nation's capital.</a></em></p><p>American lawmakers debated whether to rein in tech's legal shield, while some on the far-right suggested replacing it with government speech police - an often contradictory debate that Surman called a "Section 230 circus."</p><p>But, he added, it became clear that there's "too much power in the hands of big tech, and we need to figure out, as a society, what to do with it."</p><p>Mozilla's report highlighted some of the emerging ideas about how to meaningfully hold companies accountable, from <a href="https://www.getrevue.co/profile/themarkup/issues/big-tech-needs-persistent-monitoring-308469">investigative journalism projects like The Markup</a> that enlist everyday internet users to help them amass enough data to prove when companies aren't living up to their promises, to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-oversight-board-is-a-supreme-court-in-zuckerberg-dictatorship-2020-?r=ts-sub">Facebook's quasi-independent oversight board</a>.</p><h2>"Responsible technology"</h2><p>"Whether you're a developer or whether you're a CEO or anyone else working in tech, 2021 is going to be the year to figure out what to do about that - in your products and your marketing and in how you engage with the world," Surman said.</p><p>"Any time you're creating something and selling something that has that much of an effect on society, you've got to either figure out how to design what you're designing responsibly or expect that the people - and eventually governments - are gonna push back," he added.</p><p>True to the spirit of its report, which focused on open source, decentralized, community-driven, transparent, and diverse solutions, Mozilla asked <a href="https://2020.internethealthreport.org/">more than 100 people</a> from around the world to chime in with examples of healthy and unhealthy moments for the internet.</p><p>From <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-teens-and-k-pop-fans-tanked-trumps-tulsa-rally-2020-6">TikTok activists tanking Trump's rally</a> in Oklahoma, to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/government-internet-blackouts-human-rights-india-kashmir-coronavirus-2021-1?r=ts-sub">internet shutdowns in India</a> and elsewhere impacting 268 million people, to communities responding by <a href="https://www.apc.org/en/news/community-networks-and-covid-19-americas-region">building their own internet networks,</a> it revealed the growing awareness of technology's immense power - as well as the responsibility and challenge facing citizens who hope to ensure these technologies build more inclusive and equitable societies.</p>

Technology and society 'smashed together in a head-on collision.' Mozilla Foundation surveyed the wreckage.

For many years, <keyword id="5096083" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="digital-imaging-technology">digital imaging technology</keyword> supplier Altek Corp relied on private demonstrations to generate business from its handful of large clients in China.<br /><br /> The Taiwanese hi-tech supplier, however, must now take part in trade shows in China to widen its search for new customers, according to company executive Nicole Chen, after major client Huawei Technologies became entangled in the raging trade and tech war between China and the United States.<br /><br /> "Everything was perfect before the third quarter of last year, but now orders have halved," said Chen, who serves as special assistant to Altek founder and chairman Alex Hsia, on the sidelines of the CES Asia 2019 trade show held this week in Shanghai.<br /><br /> Huawei, the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker and second biggest smartphone vendor, used to outsource to Altek the production of image signal processors for its dual camera handsets.<br /><br /> <br /><br /> Altek has had to adjust its business strategy, according to Chen, amid a slowdown in Huawei smartphone shipments caused by the US-China tech war and the Shenzhen-based company's decision to bring more chip development projects in-house.<br /><br /> That has driven Altek to sign up new smartphone clients, including Samsung Electronics and Vivo, as well enter China's surveillance technology market with its own artificial intelligence-powered cameras and facial recognition system, Chen said.<br /><br /> "We want the trade war to end as early as possible, but it's very unpredictable," she said. "All we can do now is to spread the risk and diversify our business."<br /><br /> That conflict, in which the US imposed higher tariffs on Chinese goods, recently intensified when Washington <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012321/huawei-among-more-140-chinese-entities-us-trade-blacklist">added Huawei and 68 of its non-US affiliates to a trade blacklist</a>, officially called the Entity List, on May 16 because the company was considered a threat to national security. This action restricts Huawei's ability to buy hardware, software and services from its American hi-tech suppliers without approval from the US government.<br /><br /> <br /><br /> The US action came as talks to resolve a lingering trade war between the world's two-biggest economies ended without agreement last month, sparking a wave of targeted actions by the Trump administration against China.<br /><br /> With the US trade ban, Huawei's wholly owned chip design company, HiSilicon, is anticipated to <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/gear/article/3012008/meet-teresa-he-huawei-executive-hottest-seat-tech">supply alternative semiconductor products</a>, from those provided by the likes of Qualcomm and Intel Corp, for use in Huawei's smartphones and network equipment. Huawei is now looking to boost production of its own Kirin chipsets and roll out its "Hongmeng" operating system to replace Google's Android.<br /><br /> Huawei, which claims to be the "unparalleled leader in 5G", has also been stockpiling critical US components for almost a year, according to separate reports by research houses Haitong and Canalys.<br /><br /> Those efforts, however, have not been enough to bolster Huawei's plan to overtake Samsung and become the world's top-selling smartphone vendor by 2020.<br /><br /> That goal would take longer to achieve, said Shao Yang, chief strategy officer at Huawei's consumer business group, in his keynote presentation on Tuesday at CES Asia. He revealed there were now more than 500 million users of Huawei devices globally.<br /><br /> Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, has recently stopped several production lines for Huawei smartphones because of the Chinese company's reduced orders for new handsets, according to sources.<br /><br /> While some hi-tech suppliers claim to have not yet been affected by the US-China dispute, they are prepared to raise prices if the conflict escalates with heavier tariffs on a broader range of products.<br /><br /> Shanghai-based industrial automation company Keenon Robotics, an exhibitor at CES Asia, is closely monitoring the situation and would raise prices on its products when the tariffs kick in, spokeswoman Ella Chi said.<br /><br /> Other changes may be more subtle, as uncertainties complicate market sentiment for domestic and foreign brands, according to other exhibitors at the trade show.<br /><br /> Shi Shen, a sales representative at a smart home company headquartered in Hefei, capital of eastern China's Hefei province, noticed decreased demand for home appliance brands on their Apple Home-based system. "Consumers are unsure about choosing the Apple platform because of the trade war," Shi said. "They tend to side with domestic firms now because Chinese companies, such as Huawei, are developing their own smart home system."<br /><br /> Some hi-tech suppliers have stayed optimistic, despite the US-China trade row.<br /><br /> Cao Zhiqun, general manager at Shenzhen-based surveillance camera maker Zhongxin Era, said the US remains one of the company's major overseas markets. "We are prepared to push for a small increase in price when tariffs start to make an impact on our supply chain," Cao said.<br /><br /> The US government was said to be considering to <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/3011542/chinese-ai-firms-hunker-down-reports-indicate-they-are-next-us">add Chinese AI surveillance systems vendors</a> - including , Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, Zhejiang Dahua Technology and Megvii - on the same trade blacklist as Huawei, according to reports last month.<br /><br /> Cao said imposing a trade ban on those major surveillance systems providers could open up opportunities for smaller players like Zhongxin Era. "The US would only look at the big names in the industry, and we are a cheaper alternative to Hikvision for our consumers. They can't ban us all," he said.<br /><br /> This article originally appeared on the <a href="http://www.scmp.com">South China Morning Post (SCMP)</a>, the leading news media reporting on China and Asia. For more stories, please download our <a href="https://go.onelink.me/3586748601?pid=3rdpartycontentexchange">mobile app</a>, follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/scmpnews">Twitter</a>, and like us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/scmp">Facebook</a>.<br /><br />

How US-China tech war is rippling through the global supply chain

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Google is using location data to tell health organizations which global communities are staying at home, and which aren't.</li><li>It uses anonymized data taken from smartphones using Google's apps and services.</li><li>The new tool shows how important data can be in efforts to stop the spread of the virus. </li><li>But it also raises some privacy concerns, especially given how how much other data Google has about users of its various services, from Maps to email. </li><li>Verily, the healthtech company owned by Google parent Alphabet, that is providing a site to help people get screened for the coronavirus, is requiring people to sign in with a Google account.</li><li>Google says the data Verily collects is not linked to other Google products. But Google has a history of changing policies about how it handles user data.</li><li><a href="http://newsletter.businessinsider.com/join/4np/trending">Click here to get BI Prime's weekly 'Trending' tech newsletter in your email inbox.</a></li></ul><p>Google wants to help halt the spread of the coronavirus by harnessing the power of data.</p><p>The internet company recently announced that it is using location data gleaned from hundreds of millions of smartphones around the world to give health organizations <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-releases-lockdown-movement-location-data-2020-4">a window into</a> how communities in 131 different countries are moving.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/">COVID-10 Community Mobility Reports website</a>, launched Friday, shows how many people are visiting certain locations like grocery stores and parks. That's important as health organizations try to understand where social distancing is working, and where it isn't. </p><p>But the project has raised some concerns. Just how much of our personal data is being collected and shared to create this capability, and is there any reason to worry about our privacy?</p><p>First, it's important to clarify what Google says it's doing.  The company says the data is taken from all of its location-enabled apps, on both Android and iPhone devices, where the user has opted into sharing their location history - something they must opt into in the settings. The information that Google collects is anonymized and combined, or aggregated, with everyone else's data so as to not include any personally identifiable information.</p><p>"No personally identifiable information, such as an individual's location, contacts or movement, will be made available at any point," Google said. </p><p>The data, which is published in PDF format by country or region, breaks down mobility trends into categories: retail and recreation spots, grocery and pharmacy stores, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential. Google presents this data in percentages rather than offering specific numbers of people in these locations.</p><p>Google is also using something called differential privacy, which adds "noise" to the collected data in order to obscure anything that could identify a user.</p><h2>The cross-referencing risk</h2><p>Even if you accept Google's promise that it will not share users' personal information with anyone, and that the data could not be untangled by a third party, that still leaves the issue of how Google itself might use all this information.</p><p>Yes, this is technically data Google already has, explained Hermanshu Nigam, founder and CEO of Cyber Security Affairs. "They're just re-crunching the numbers," he told Business Insider.  But there is still a concern that Google might be able to cross-reference this data with other information it collects across its services.</p><p>After all, the company doesn't have the best track record of keeping its various buckets separate: In 2016 it changed a policy that previously kept users' browsing history separate from personal information taken from other Google services.</p><p>Since the removal of that clause, Google has been able to build detailed ad profiles of its users by mushing all of this data together.</p><p>Google also <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/12/11/google-gives-feds-1500-leads-to-arsonist-smartphones-in-unprecedented-geofence-search/#1e08788427dc">has a history</a> of complying with geofence warrants by giving the police location data that can identify devices in a certain area at a certain time. Such data <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761">placed one person at the middle of an investigation this year</a>, who was later cleared.</p><p>Plus, right now, Verily, the life sciences division of Alphabet and Google sibling, is making users sign in with a Google account to use its COVID-19 screening service. This has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/senators-letter-verily-user-data-google-sign-in-screenings-2020-3">prompted an inquiry from US senators</a>, but at the time of writing the requirement is still in place.</p><p>That means Alphabet, Google's parent company, has information on who has screened for COVID-19, and Verily says it may also get access to your test results, should you take one. Verily told Business Insider that all of the data it collects is not linked to Google's other products, but it continues to face probing from lawmakers as to how it will exactly handle it all.</p><h2>Google has an amazing amount of information about you</h2><p>Consider all the different sources of data that Google could theoretically analyze and connect together as it relates to the coronavirus:</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;"><strong>Maps: </strong>Google Maps stores information on every place you've been. While it isn't precise enough to tell if you've been within six feet of another person, this data could still be used to determine if you traveled through a high-risk location, or if you're out and about during a shelter-in-place.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;"><strong>Search: </strong>Your stored search history tells Google a lot about you, and is used to inform the way it targets ads across the web. Searches for symptoms, cures and similar will all feed into the big Google brain.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;"><strong>Android: </strong>Users of Android phones should always be a little more cautious. A <a href="https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DCN-Google-Data-Collection-Paper.pdf">research paper</a> published in 2018 found that Android phones send data samples from Google's apps to its servers far more frequently than Google apps on iPhones do. On Android, location settings can be controlled at the device level, while iPhone users will need to change their Google account settings either by going through one of Google's apps or using the web.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;"><strong>Gmail:</strong> Perhaps your COVID-19 test results were sent to your Gmail account. Your plane tickets from a trip to China or Italy are also in your email. Google doesn't let employees read private emails of course, but its ad technology scans the contents of those messages.  </p><p style="padding-left: 40px;"><strong>Verily:</strong> Anyone who uses Verily's COVID-19 screening service must do so with a Google account. Verily says the information isn't shared with other Google services, but this still raises plenty of questions. Verily also says on its website: "Your test results may be provided to Verily and further shared with public health authorities, including the California Department of Public Health, to inform public health actions to help protect our community."</p><p>Legally, if Google wants to use the community COVID-19 data in a way that differs from the privacy policies people previously agreed to, it would need to ask for users' permission. So if Google decided it wanted to change the rules, data collected before any changes to the program couldn't be used, Hermanshu Nigam, said.</p><p>Still, there's an amazing amount of information that Google has at its disposal. And as we've seen in other countries like Israel, which has allowed the Shin Bet security service to track citizens' movements using technical data from cell phones, existing rules can be legally overridden in extraordinary situations like a pandemic. </p><p>And in countries with more authoritarian governments like China, popular commercial apps like Alipay and WeChat are now being used <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/chinas-coronavirus-health-code-apps-raise-concerns-over-privacy">to assign citizens with special color codes</a> based on their health status. Each individual's color determines their freedom of personal movement. While that level of control is unlikely to occur in the US, it shows how easily today's data-powered consumer technology can be turned into restrictive tools in the name of fighting the virus.</p><h2>What happens when this is all over?</h2><p>Another potential concern is what happens once the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Does Google continue to offer its anonymized "community mobility reports" to governments and health organizations when there's less of a need for it? </p><p>That's the kind of mission creep that privacy experts have long warned about in the policy realm, with surveillance to deter terrorism or drug trafficking gradually becoming the norm and outliving the initial objective.</p><p>Of course, it's also possible that after the pandemic, society will have much different opinions about privacy, perhaps seeing a need to trade away certain expectations of privacy in order to more effectively fight pandemics. </p><p>Lydia Clougherty Jones, a senior director at analyst at Gartner focusing on privacy, raises an interesting question: whether community-based data collection like Google's during the COVID-19 pandemic could expand our notions of what should be protected, and what shouldn't, in the future.</p><p>"I think the aggregated data is informing policy because it's helping states move to a more robust shelter in place order, if that's what is required for the community. But it's based on community data, not individual data, so when the crisis is over it remains to be seen if the need for such aggregated data will still exist.</p><p>"Right now privacy is about individual data, and this location tracking is about community data. If we're being compared to other locations, does that impact our identity? Will we start to look at privacy at an aggregate level, say NY vs Florida? There are tensions between locations being driven by the privacy debate."</p><p class="tagline"><a href="/intelligence/digital-health?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_subscription&amp;itm_content=health&amp;itm_campaign=digital-health"></a><br /><br />Featured Health Articles:<br />- <a href="/telehealth-industry-explained">Telehealth Industry Explained</a><br />- <a href="/value-based-care-pay-for-performance-healthcare-model">Value-Based Care Explained</a><br />- <a href="/senior-care-market-trends">Senior Care &amp; Assisted Living Market</a><br />- <a href="/wearable-technology-healthcare-medical-devices">Smart Medical Devices &amp; Wearable Tech</a><br />- <a href="/artificial-intelligence-healthcare">AI in Healthcare</a><br />- <a href="/remote-patient-monitoring-industry-explained">Remote Patient Monitoring Explained</a>- <a href="/ai-medical-diagnosis-report">AI in Medical Diagnosis Systems</a></p>

Google is fighting COVID-19 by monitoring location data in 131 countries. It's a reminder of how much info Google has about us and how easily the pandemic could blow up privacy.

Check out the more than 50 pitch decks fintechs used to raise millions in funding from top investors

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>China Daily via Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, China, in April 2018.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Muslims in Xinjiang, China, are being surveilled and locked up en masse by regional authorities who see them as terrorists whose religion are akin to a disease or cancer.</li><li>Meanwhile, India revoked the autonomy of the mostly-Muslim region of Jammu and Kashmir, and is building detention camps for ethnic Bengalis - most of them Muslim - in the northeastern state  of Assam.</li><li>There are several parallels between these two countries' actions - both claim their projects are to prevent violence and explicitly told other countries to butt out of their affairs.</li><li>The rest of the world is too powerless to stop these economic powerhouses from continuing their mass internment projects.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>China and India, two economic powerhouses with some of the largest populations in the world, are brutally oppressing their ethnic and religious minorities. But the international community is loathe to rebuke them.</p><p>In <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/xinjiang">Xinjiang</a>, Chinese authorities have installed the equivalent of a 21st-century police state, with the Uighur ethnic minority monitored by electronic spyware, and locked up en masse in prisons and detention camps. Uighurs call the region East Turkestan.</p><p>In August, Indian authorities revoked the semi-autonomy of the disputed territories of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/kashmir">Jammu and Kashmir</a>, and placed the region under an internet and phone blackout that largely remains today.</p><p>Residents - many of whom are Muslim - have been placed under virtual house arrest, unable to worship on holidays or <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-kashmir-trade-lockdown-ruins-apple-economy-2019-9">harvest crops</a>.</p><p>In Assam, northeast India, officials are also building internment camps to hold hundreds of mostly-Muslim ethnic-Bengalis, whom the state has declared illegal immigrants because their names are not included on the National Register of Citizens.</p><p>Many of them have lived in India their whole lives, but their citizenship documents are nonexistent, lost, or riddled with spelling errors. Indian authorities <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/india-implement-nationwide-citizenship-count-191120122109336.html">said this week</a> they want to extend the policy throughout the country, making activists grow more fearful for Muslims' safety.</p><p>"In Assam, the camps are currently set up within existing prisons," Angana Chatterji, co-chair of the University of California, Berkeley's Initiative on Political Conflict, Gender, and People's Rights told Business Insider.</p><p>"Reportedly about 600 to 700 people are being held in them," she said, adding that the prisons and camps being built "are being likened to concentration camps."</p><p>Though Xinjiang, Kashmir, and Assam are hundreds of miles apart, they all seem to follow the same playbook.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Anuwar Hazarika / REUTERS</span></p><p class="caption">Shefali Hajong, a laborer whose name has been excluded from India's National Register of Citizens, at a construction site for a detention center in Goapara, Assam, in September 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2><strong>Both countries target Muslims to 'prevent violence'</strong></h2><p>China has repeatedly claimed that its actions in Xinjiang are a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-tries-to-cite-islamophobia-to-export-model-of-muslim-repression-2018-11">counterterrorism measure</a>, and even <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-tries-to-cite-islamophobia-to-export-model-of-muslim-repression-2018-11">cites Islamophobia</a> to justify its actions. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-uighur-detention-camps-cleanse-religion-leaked-documents-nyt-2019-11">Leaked Communist Party documents</a>, published last week by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-detention-directive.html">The New York Times</a>, shows authorities referring to Uighurs' religion as a cancer, disease, or drug addiction.</p><p>Meanwhile, India's External Affairs Minister <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/indian-external-affairs-minister-on-kashmir-climate-trump-a-1296790.html">Subrahmanyam Jaishankar</a> has said the country cut off Kashmir's internet and communications to fight radicalization and "prevent the loss of life." Locals and law-enforcement officials <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-villagers-allege-beatings-abuse-electric-shock-india-denies-2019-8">have been involved</a> in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-man-blinded-pellets-police-insist-no-major-injuries-2019-8">violent clashes</a>, and thousands of people have been detained.</p><p>Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which is built on Hindu supremacy, has also capitalized on local Hindu suspicion in Assam of ethnic Bengalis, who have different ethnic identities, religions, and languages, said Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director of Human Rights Watch.</p><p>Amit Shah, the country's home minister, has referred to illegal Muslim immigrants in India as "<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/india-election-speech/amit-shah-vows-to-throw-illegal-immigrants-into-bay-of-bengal-idUSKCN1RO1YD">termites</a>" and threatened to throw them into the Bay of Bengal. The government has justified its actions in Assam as a matter of national security.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Anuwar Hazarika / REUTERS</span></p><p class="caption">Laborers at a school building at a construction site for a detention center in Goalpara district, Assam, in September 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2><strong>Ethnic tensions are an 'internal matter'</strong></h2><p>Both China and India have batted away international criticism by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-lawmakers-bill-punishing-china-over-uighur-muslim-persecution-2018-11">insisting that those issues</a> are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-tells-un-to-back-off-after-alleging-xinjiang-has-1-million-in-camps-2018-9">internal matters</a> - and to an extent, their tactics are working.</p><p>The Chinese government forbids foreign journalists from entering Xinjiang to report, opting instead to organize <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-xinjiang-usa/u-s-official-denounces-choreographed-visits-to-chinas-xinjiang-idUKKCN1R503T">heavily-choreographed</a> and chaperoned tours to the region that involve bizarre performances of Uighurs dancing or learning Chinese in classrooms. At least two such trips have taken place.</p><p>Beijing has repeatedly dismissed reports of physical and psychological torture in those camps, claiming instead that they are "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-calls-xinjiang-uighur-detention-camps-free-vocational-training-2018-10">free vocational training</a>" - even though many of the detainees doctors, journalists, or other professionals.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">A perimeter fence  constructed around a detention camp for Uighurs in Dabancheng, Xinjiang. China calls this a "vocational skills education center."</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>India, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that the Kashmir issue can only resolved bilaterally between India and Pakistan, citing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-negotiate-in-kashmir-pakistan-india-2019-7">two historic agreements</a> on the matter. The issue of illegal immigration in Assam and elsewhere is <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/india-implement-nationwide-citizenship-count-191120122109336.html">a matter of national security</a>, according to Indian politicians. </p><p>In October, Indian authorities took a group of mostly right-leaning Members of the European Parliament on a tightly-controlled trip to Kashmir, which included a stay in a luxury hotel and a peaceful boat ride, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-50231022">the BBC reported</a>. The delegation did not witness any clashes or detentions.</p><p>But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a vocal critic of Indian policy in Kashmir, was barred from entering Kashmir during a trip to India in early October.</p><p>"I was told it was not a good time" by Indian authorities, Van Hollen told Business Insider. "India's actions are fueling the more extreme elements on the ground," he added, referring to anti-India militants in the region, many of whom are funded by Pakistan.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Adnan Abidi/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Smoke rises from teargas shells fired by Indian security forces in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir state, in August 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Darren Byler, a Uighur expert and University of Colorado researcher, said the Chinese and Indian government tours are likely helping quell foreign criticism.</p><p>"I think the people that go on those tours, they understand that this is being staged for them, at least to some extent," he told Business Insider.</p><p>"But they also see it as a way of justifying, saying they've done their due diligence, and they've taken a look at what's happening on the ground - so they can sign off, check the box, to say they've looked into the box, and say there's nothing there."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Thomas Peter / REUTERS</span></p><p class="caption">A Chinese police officer armed with an automatic weapon gestures towards reporters in Yining, Xinjiang, in September 2018.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Criticism will not be tolerated</h2><p>China has repeatedly batted away criticism over Xinjiang, saying that its policies helped clamp down on terrorism and violence in the region. Shortly after The Times published the leaked Uighur files, the Chinese foreign ministry <a href="https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/wjdt_674879/fyrbt_674889/t1716742.shtml">said</a> its tactics in the region were "worth learning from."</p><p>India, meanwhile, has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-crisis-india-accuses-media-fake-news-using-trump-playbook-2019-9">embarked on a disinformation campaign</a> regarding Kashmir, accusing the BBC and Reuters of lying about massive protests in the region <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-india-accuse-bbc-reuters-lying-about-protests-despite-video-2019-8">even though they were recorded on video</a>.</p><p>While both China and India's actions are driven by nationalism, it's important to note that they're not coordinating on tactics - the two countries have an <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/modi-2-0-and-indias-complex-relationship-with-china/">extremely complicated relationship,</a> due in part to China's encroachment near Indian territory and its friendly relationship with India's main rival, Pakistan.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Adnan Abidi</span></p><p class="caption">A signboard on the Indian side of the Indo-China border at Bumla in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, in 2009. China calls the state South Tibet.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Too big to punish</h2><p>Another similarity between the Xinjiang, Kashmir, and Assam crises is the lack of tangible, international action against them.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/islamic-world-stopped-calling-out-chinas-muslim-persecution-2019-4">Not a single Muslim country is standing up to China over its actions,</a> either to preserve existing economic ties or in response to Chinese threats to suspend future investment. Many Western countries have publicly criticized China's actions in Xinjiang - but have taken limited steps to stop the atrocities.</p><p>The European Union, for example, has told China to "<a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190509-eu-urges-china-change-situation-xinjiang">change</a>" its actions but has not taken any tangible steps to ensure it. The 28-nation bloc lacks a coherent view toward China - and Beijing has capitalized on this disunity by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-china-playbook-to-pit-eu-countries-against-each-other-2019-3">pitting EU countries against each other to prevent a united policy</a> that could hamper its plans.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Philippe Wojazer/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel with  Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Elysée Palace in Paris in March 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Last month the <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2019-22210.pdf">US Commerce Department blacklisted</a> 28 Chinese companies, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-blacklists-china-ai-startups-2019-10">including eight highly-valued AI startups</a>, in response to their role in the "implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance" against Muslims in Xinjiang.</p><p>The sanctions were hailed as a good first step, but there is no evidence of change in China's activities, or any indication that the US will take further measures.</p><p>An executive at Dahua, one of the sanctioned tech firms, even <a href="https://ipvm.com/reports/dahua-strong-sanction">appeared to celebrate</a> after the announcement, telling <a href="http://www.nbd.com.cn/articles/2019-10-18/1379375.html">a business newspaper</a>: "The fact that we are under the US control list shows that we indeed have a strong technological capability."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Associated Press/Andy Wong</span></p><p class="caption">Xi and US President Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during Trump's state visit in November 2017.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"I think there's a lot of rhetoric - people want to care, they want to project that they're caring, but when it actually comes down to some kind of human or economic cost, they're not willing to take that step," Byler, the Uighur expert, said.</p><p>"They also point a finger at the Muslim-majority countries, saying: these countries aren't even taking a stand at all, or they're supporting the Chinese state," he added. "So that helps them feel justified in saying, 'at least we're condemning it, we've taken that step.'"</p><p>Aside from written statements of concern, the US has not taken any concrete action against India over its crackdown in Kashmir and Assam either.</p><p>The House Asia subcommittee <a href="https://sherman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/asia-subcommittee-to-hold-a-hearing-on-human-rights-in-south-asia-on">held hearings</a> on human-rights violations in the region in late October, and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2019%20India%20Issue%20Brief%20-%20Religious%20Freedom%20Implications.pdf">issued a report</a> this week noting their concern over India's using the citizenship list to tacitly set a religious requirement on citizenship and oppress Muslims.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Mukhtar Khan / Associated Press</span></p><p class="caption">A Kashmiri woman walks past paramilitary soldiers in Bijbehara, south of Srinagar, Kashmir, in October 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The US is also "highly unlikely" to impose economic sanctions on India over Kashmir, a former US diplomat specializing in South Asia told Business Insider, noting that Washington hasn't sanctioned Pakistan for harboring militants in Kashmir either. The source had declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.</p><p>But "that doesn't mean that it's okay to apply a communications blockade on an entire region, and put a bunch of people who are mainstream politicians and who used to be in alliances with the ruling Indian government, into preventive detention," the person said.</p><p>An appropriate venue to raise India's actions in Kashmir would be at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) the diplomat said. </p><p>But the fact that the US, the most powerful country in the world, quit the UNHCR - <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/44537372">calling it "hypocritical and self-serving"</a>  - has effectively neutered its leadership in human rights and leverage to condemn India's human rights abuses.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Denis Balibouse/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, in March 2019. The US quit the council in June 2018.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>There is also evidence to suggest that UNHCR condemnations don't work: Earlier this year 22 mostly-Western countries <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-joint-letter-condemn-muslim-oppression-no-islamic-signatories-2019-7">wrote a joint letter</a> slamming China's "arbitrary detention and restrictions on freedom of movement of Uighurs, and other Muslim and minority communities in Xinjiang."</p><p>The harsh language of the letter was outweighed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/syria-saudi-nk-support-china-uighur-prison-camps-xinjiang-2019-7">by 37 other countries</a> - including Syria and North Korea - standing up for China.</p><p>And in September, amid the Kashmir blackout and Assam's citizenship crisis, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-plays-unusual-role-of-warm-up-act-at-massive-rally-for-modi-in-houston/2019/09/22/18cf7a2a-dd50-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html">hosted Modi at a rally in Houston, Texas</a>, where Modi defended his government's actions in Kashmir.</p><p>What China and India are doing to their Muslim minorities is bleak. But without powerful countries and international bodies willing to take a stand, these persecutions are likely to continue unimpeded.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/secret-service-boot-camp-training-academy-president-security-2019-11">We went inside Secret Service boot camp where recruits get top secret training for their 'zero-fail mission'</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

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