Full 5G and Internet of Things files for subscribers —
Artificial Intelligence evidence can be accessed in our original contention.
BRI includes 5G to Europe, 5G key to Internet of Things (IoT)
Federico Pieraccini, April 3, 2019, Belt and Road Initiative in Full Swing in Europe, https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/03/belt-and-road-initiative-in-full-swing-in-europe/
The Chinese BRI mega project kicked off in 2014 with the ambitious goal of integrating trade between China and Europe by sea and by land, in the process incorporating all the countries in between. The idea, as a natural consolidation of trade, is to shorten the delivery times of goods by rail and integrate sea routes. The project covers not only ports and rail lines but also the construction of technological infrastructure to achieve global interconnectivity using the 5G technology developed by the Chinese tech giant Huawei…. Italy has in recent months approached the BRI as a result of the new government consisting of the Lega Nord and Five Star Movement (M5S). The decision to sign a memorandum of understanding between Beijing and Rome underlines how the new government wants to maintain a balanced position between Washington and Beijing in certain sectors. This is exactly the approach of Germany, which has elected to continue deepening its ties with Moscow vis-a-vis hydrocarbons and Nord Stream 2 in the face of pressure from Washington. Moreover, both Germany and Italy have confirmed that they want to rely on Huawei for the implementation and management of 5G traffic, which is fundamental to a world dominated by the internet of things.
China’s Unicon will build 5G in BRI countries
Jeffrey Pao, 6-25, 19, https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/06/article/china-unicom-to-build-5g-networks-on-belt-and-road/, China Unicom to build 5G networks on Belt and Road
China Unicom, one of the three telecom giants in China, will push forward with the construction of 5G telecommunication infrastructure globally, particularly in Belt and Road countries, according to the company’s leader. As the first Chinese telco that went through mixed ownership reform, China Unicom will promote its “Five New” strategy, which refers to new governance, new genes, new operations, new functions and new ecosystem, Li Guohua, the President of China Unicom, said in an opening speech at the China Unicom International Partners Meeting in Shanghai on Tuesday. Li said China Unicom will strengthen its ties with global telcos and industry chains and jointly promote the construction of 5G telecommunication networks, apply new technologies and form an ecology with mutual benefits. He said China’s 5G commercial services will create a direct economic benefit of US$1.5 trillion by 2025. He added that China’s 5G sector will soon enter a rapid growth period with more and more international partnership in the sector. In 2016, China Unicom launched its mixed-ownership reform proposal, which was approved in the following year. It received a fund of $10 billion from 14 strategic investors including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and Jindong for the restructuring. On June 6 this year, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology granted 5G licenses for commercial use to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom – plus China Broadcasting Network. The move is believed to help China speed up its development in the 5G sector. Now China Unicom has its 5G network covering seven key cities, which include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Xiong’an. It also has hotspot coverage in 33 Chinese cities. China Unicom held its international partners meeting ahead of the Mobile World Congress 2019, which will be on in Shanghai from Wednesday to Friday.
Being on China’s internet networks threatens cyber security and increases data drive surveillance
European Law Blog, June 25, 2019 , The Road that divided the EU: Italy joins China’s Belt and Road Initiative, https://europeanlawblog.eu/2019/06/25/the-road-that-divided-the-eu-italy-joins-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative/
A number of officials voiced concerns that through developing telecommunications networks China could spy and disrupt European communications[25]. These concerns are especially pertinent in the light of the ongoing cybersecurity controversy surrounding Chinese tech giant Huawei[26]. In order to avoid such adverse effects, ‘[s]ome EU officials advocate the bloc’s right to veto Chinese investments across the region[27]’, pointing out, moreover, that China has a poor reputation regarding transparency and that unfair trade practices will only favour Chinese firms.These concerns are also reflected in the European Commission Report titled ‘EU-China –
Digital BRI includes 5G and is critical to China’s global economic and general dominance, including the strength of the Yuan
Ravi Kant, 6-25, 19, https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/06/opinion/digital-silk-road-xis-dream-of-conquering-asia/, Digital Silk Road: Xi’s dream of conquering Asia
Geopolitics is all about leverage and geo-economics is all about bargaining on the leverage. The relative peace in the world today exists between the thin line of leverage and bargain, especially in the case of the ongoing trade war between China and the US. Since Chinese President Xi Jinping inaugurated the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s New Silk Road-styled global trade and infrastructure project, in 2013, the focus has shifted from geographical boundaries to digital boundaries. The idea behind Xi’s digital push is to build digital infrastructure and develop internet communication along the Silk Road. China’s modern-day “Digital Silk Road” is an attempt to revive and extend it beyond hard infrastructure towards soft infrastructure. The idea of digital connectivity in the Belt and Road Initiative is to build capabilities in emerging technologies, which appears to have taken off parallel to the broader BRI agenda. One of the key goals of the BRI was to put China at the forefront of setting up the new global technological order. Xi understands that without the help of technology, his projects of the 21st century “will be merely a mirage.” A China-centered transnational internet network infrastructure to reboot globalization Nearly two years ago, at the first Belt and Road International Forum, Xi announced that technology would be integrated into the BRI to create the “Digital Silk Road of the 21st century.” A Digital Silk Road is also expected to function as a complex alliance between the Chinese state and its homegrown internet companies to increase the strategic power of China. China-based Internet firms see the Digital Silk Road as an opportunity to expand their footprint across the world. Chinese Internet companies have been assigned a critical role in addressing this problem. The increased cooperation between the objectives of the state and digital companies will eventually produce great outcomes for the Chinese economy. Chinese giant Alibaba’s Alibaba Cloud started in 2009 and quickly expanded internationally, establishing data centers in Dubai, Sydney and Frankfurt. The BRI has offered a major boost to Alibaba cloud’s business development. China wants to push Chinese companies to compete in terms of quality with their American counterparts. China has listed the internationalization of the yuan as one of the prime motives of the BRI Apart from that, the Chinese state is forcing them to export China-owned technical standards. China Mobile has been actively promoting the globalization of TD-LTE, especially in the BRI regions. In 2017, the company reported that 53 countries and regions were rolling out 99 TD-LTE networks; of these, 39 TD-LTE networks from 21 countries and regions are along the BRI routes. The sheer size of economies of scale of Internet proprietary network standards will not only generate considerable royalties but also provide a significant market share abroad. Internationalization of the renminbi: It’s just the beginning China has listed the internationalization of the yuan as one of the prime motives of the BRI. The BRI is expected to serve as a stimulus for the global use of the Chinese currency through international transactions and infrastructure investment. China needs the transnational financial data network to improve the global circulation of its own currency to gain power over their strategic infrastructure. It has already taken a great stride by opening the Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System (CIPS) as a parallel – or an alternative to – the US-led society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system (SWIFT). As a China-centered international financial clearing system, CIPS is expected to promote cross-border transactions denominated in renminbi, helping China gain authority over the global system. This will also increase the demand for the renminbi. China is positioning itself at the forefront of 5G, recognizing that fifth-generation mobile communications will be vital for the “information expressway’’ that can enhance its global competitiveness. Huawei, the controversial Chinese telecom company, is also involved in deploying 5G mobile technology under the Digital Silk Road. As of February 2019, Huawei owns 36% of all 5G patents worldwide. You might also like: The New Silk Roads reach the next level A large number of semi-authoritarian countries around the world are under the BRI umbrella. The Chinese digital platforms will help them to conduct surveillance of their populations in the future. Furthermore, if the countries particpating in the BRI become dependent on China for their internet, they also open up opportunities for China’s intelligence community to collect, monitor and divert their data traffic. Given China’s history of extensive surveillance, censorship and stealing intellectual property, this is highly problematic. The Digital Silk Road will give China unprecedented leverage as a global player.
The link is magnified, as China needs foreign 5G development to sustain its industry
Jonathan Holslag, 2019, onathan Holslag is a Belgian professor, author and policy advisor. Jonathan Holslag is a professor international politics at the Free University of Brussels, where he teaches diplomatic history and international politics, and also lectures on geopolitics at various defence academies in Europe, The Silk Road Trap, page number at end of card
It has a mission to increase cross-border land, submarine and trunk networks, and to build so-called telecom hubs and network operation centres. It has a long list of such linkages, with Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Vietnam, Macau, Myanmar, Nepal, Japan, Singapore and Europe. It states as its objective also to serve as a catalyst for growth of all related industries – business services, equipment producers, infrastructure developers, e-commerce – as well as to make Chinese standards the leading standards in the world, such as the 4G TD-LTE protocol and Huawei’s 5G Protocol.113 The strategy is essentially the same as for the other segments of the sector. A report by the Ministry of Commerce states: First, the communication infrastructure of many countries along the Belt and Road is backward. Second, the domestic telecommunications industry suffers from excess capacity so that expanding on the international market is the best way out, for instance by promoting telecom services, telecom network construction and supporting and protecting the entire telecom industry chain to go out. Third, telecom operators can also take advantage of the going out of domestic internet and e-commerce enterprises and integrate themselves into a unified platform.114 Holslag, Jonathan. The Silk Road Trap (p. 139). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Huwaie trying to take control of global 5G network space
François Godement & Abigaël Vasselier , European Council on Foreign Relations, December, 2017, China at the gates: A new power audit of EU-China relations, https://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/china_eu_power_audit7242 François Godement is director of the Asia and China programme and a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is a non-resident senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, and an outside consultant for the Policy Planning Staff of the French ministry of foreign affairs. A long-time professor at France’s National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations and at Sciences Po, he created Asia Centre IFRI at the Paris-based Institut Français des Relations Internationales (1985-2005). In 2005 he founded Asia Centre as an independent centre for research on Asian issues as they intersect global debates. He is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de la rue d’Ulm (Paris), where he majored in history, and he was a postgraduate student at Harvard University. In 1995 he co-founded the European committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), which he co-chaired until 2008. He has also been a member of the advisory board for the Europe China Academic Network (ECAN) He is editor of China Analysis, a quarterly analytical survey of Chinese news and debate published by ECFR. His recent publications include “Expanded ambitions, shrinking achievements: How China sees the global order” (2017), “China’s market economy status and the European interest” (2016), and Contemporary China: between Mao and Market (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Abigaël Vasselier is programme coordinator and policy fellow at the Asia and China programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She joined ECFR in 2013. Prior to that she graduated in international relations from Sciences Po Aix. She holds a master’s degree in Asian politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies and holds a bachelor’s degree in Chinese. She also studied at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. She has previously written for China Analysis and for China Brief.
Huawei is the most active Chinese firm in lobbying, both at member state level but even more so in Brussels. The military origins of its founder, Ren Zhengfei, and its core business, which involves hardware and software access to voice and data traffic, have always posed a security problem. It has been barred from communication equipment contracts for the US government since 2012, and from Australia’s national broadband network. In the UK, it has had to set up a unit supervised (but not managed) by the British government to ensure the cybersecurity of its installations against siphoning from China. Other European countries tend to regard its entry into the UK market as a Trojan horse within the EU. In 2011 London actually turned down a Huawei offer to provide mobile reception on the London Underground for free. It is now part of a consortium for the same project. But Huawei is also increasingly leading on network infrastructure – so much so that it is technically irreplaceable in the coming 5G mobile generation. Beyond the direct lobbying, and generous grants to think-tanks in Europe, it is now very active in defining 5G norms compatible with Chinese-made equipment. This is likely to be a battleground on issues of privacy and security: the 5G norm will facilitate the ‘internet of things’, including multiple access points to communications, and starting from the network antennae. Data centres – which China increasingly requires to be placed inside China for companies operating on the China market – may also become an issue: in December 2016, Global Switch, a data company with storage locations that include Hong Kong, sold a 49 per cent stake for £2.4 billion (the biggest Chinese acquisition in the UK for 2016) to a consortium of Chinese investors including Jiangsu Sha Steel Group but also subsidiaries of AVIC, the huge defence aerospace corporation. As one writer put it, “In other words, the heart of China’s defence industry just bought a major data centre in the UK and no one seems to have noticed.”
China could use network dominance to disrupt US military operations and support authoritarianism
Statement of rFormer US Military Leaders, April 3, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/former-u-s-military-leaders-warn-of-risks-to-future-combat-operations-posed-by-chinese-built-5g-networks/?noteId=75d276c8-8ac5-4dc7-98c7-981ec0a5da72&questionId=b41ae8c1-2697-4dd7-9a16-a56318713b37&utm_term=.f2035886abed, Former U.S. military leaders warn of risks to future combat operations posed by Chinese-built 5G networks
As military leaders who have commanded U.S. and allied troops around the world, we have grave concerns about a future where a Chinese-developed 5G network is widely adopted among our allies and partners. Our concerns fall into three main categories: 1. Espionage: Chinese-designed 5G networks will provide near-persistent data transfer back to China that the Chinese government could capture at will. This is not our opinion or even that of our intelligence community, but the directive of China’s 2017 Intelligence Law, which legally requires that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with” the security services of China’s One-Party State.
- Future military operations: The Department of Defense is still considering how it could use future 5G networks to share intelligence or conduct military operations. The immense bandwidth and access potential inherent in commercial 5G systems means effective military operations in the future could benefit from military data being pushed over these networks. There is reason for concern that in the future the U.S. will not be able to use networks that rely on Chinese technology for military operations in the territories of traditional U.S. allies or emerging partners in Europe, Asia, and beyond. While our concern is for future operations, the time for action is now. Physical infrastructure like ports can easily change ownership, but digital infrastructure is more pernicious because, once constructed, there are limited options to reverse course. This is even more true for Chinese telecommunications firms whose systems are not interoperable with other companies’ equipment, cultivating a persistent reliance on the
Chinese firm.
- Democracy and human rights: The export of China’s 5G technologies and suite of related digital products to other countries will advance a pernicious high-tech authoritarianism. If China is invited by foreign governments to build these networks, Beijing could soon have access to the most private data of billions of people, including social media, medical services, gaming, location services, payment and banking information, and more. This information will give China’s repressive government unprecedented powers of foreign influence to favor authoritarian allies, coerce neighboring countries seeking to preserve their sovereignty, and punish human-rights activists the world over. This will make authoritarian governments more powerful while making liberal states more vulnerable. We believe calls for the intelligence community to produce a “smoking gun” to illustrate Beijing’s pernicious behavior misunderstand the challenge at hand. The Chinese Cyber Security Law and other national strategies like “Military-Civil Fusion” mean that nothing Chinese firms do can be independent of the state. Firms must support the law enforcement, intelligence, and national security interests of the Chinese Communist Party—a system fundamentally antithetical to the privacy and security of Chinese citizens and all those using Chinese networks overseas. The onus should instead be on Beijing to explain why it is prudent for countries to rely on Chinese telecommunications technology when Beijing’s current practices threaten the integrity of personal data, government secrets, military operations, and liberal governance.
Admiral James Stavridis
USN (Ret.) Commander, U.S. European Command; U.S. Southern Command
General Philip Breedlove
USAF (Ret.) Commander, U.S. European Command
Admiral Samuel Locklear III
USN (Ret.) Commander, U.S. Pacific Command
Admiral Timothy J. Keating
USN (Ret.) Commander, U.S. Pacific Command
Lieutenant General James R. Clapper Jr.
USAF (Ret.) Director of National Intelligence
General Keith B. Alexander
USA (Ret.) Commander, U.S. Cyber Command & Director, National Security Agency
War
European Parliament Report, April 5, 2019, 5G in the EU and Chinese telecoms suppliers, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2019/637912/EPRS_ATA(2019)637912_EN.pdf
By contrast, Huawei enjoyssignificant market penetration in the EU on account of its competitive prices and supposedly better quality. Until recently there has been little public awareness in the EU of how the close ties Chinese public and private firms have with the Chinese Communist Party, in order to thrive in the Chinese eco-system, may expose liberal democracies to cyber-attacks, cyber-espionage, digital authoritarianism, and information warfare in the context of 5G. A 2018 US consultancy report points to a range of risk factors associated with Huawei, the most serious concerns being those related to cybersecurity, state-sponsored espionage, military influence and foreign political interference. China uses advanced technologies for the systematic digital surveillance of its population, notably in its restive Xinjiang province, while the EU pursues a human-centric approach to advanced technologies, with the protection of the digital rights of the individual being key. From a legal perspective, Chinese companies and individuals are obliged under penal sanctions to cooperate in intelligence gathering under the Chinese National Intelligence Law as well as under other related Chinese laws. Hence, the US has claimed that China could use Huawei’s 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, by compelling operators to spy, steal corporate, government or military secrets and transmit data to the Chinese authorities.
The IoT is a system of surveillance
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Professor, Law, University of the District of Columbia, The Internet of Things and the Fourth Amendment Effects, 2016, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW v. 104, August 1, https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4326&context=californialawreview
The Internet of Things is by design a system of surveillance.83 Current technology based on sensor and Wi-Fi communications offers minimal security protection (at least from sophisticated parties).84 Sensors vary from the highly secure to the simplistic, with equally varying levels of encryption and protection.85 The current framework, thus, provides new surveillance opportunities for law enforcement—with or without the proper legal authority86—to monitor citizens suspected of crime.87 Just as businesses can use the highly personal data to target consumers, so too can police use such data to target suspected criminals.88 Just as surveillance technology has evolved in many other areas, the Internet of Things provides enhanced new surveillance structure worth exploring. This Section addresses the technological possibilities of the Internet of Things. Specifically, this Section examines the consequences of a seamless, secret, and occasionally sentient technology that offers new surveillance possibilities. By being seamless, IoT technology has the potential to generate an almost inescapable data web that monitors many aspects of one’s life.89 From home appliances, to cars, to medical devices, the array of objects is continuously digitizing daily activities.90 While society has recently been made aware of possible high-tech surveillance techniques involving cameras, drones, GPS tracking, and cellphone collection,91 it has not always envisioned the linkage of disparate technologies on a very personal level. Knowing you called a certain number (cell data), drove to a certain house (drone or camera), and repeated that trip every week (GPS) pales in comparison to knowing those facts plus the time the bedroom light comes on in that house (through NEST systems), the elevated heartbeat in that bedroom (through health monitors), and the opening of a particular enchanted pill bottle (smart pill bottles)—all of which might provide a much better clue about the nature of your business at the house.92 Problems of aggregation93 and magnification94 heighten the potential personal invasion as a data-rich environment creates a wider mosaic of life patterns.95 Police might no longer need to physically follow a suspect—smart sensors allow them to do so virtually.
Loss of privacy and complete control of big data means totalitarian social control
Simon Denyer, October 22, 2016, Washington Post, China’s plan to organize its society relies on “big data” to regulate everyone, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-plan-to-organize-its-whole-society-around-big-data-a-rating-for-everyone/2016/10/20/1cd0dd9c-9516-11e6-ae9d-0030ac1899cd_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop_b
Imagine a world where an authoritarian government monitors everything you do, amasses huge amounts of data on almost every interaction you make, and awards you a single score that measures how “trustworthy” you are. In this world, anything from defaulting on a loan to criticizing the ruling party, from running a red light to failing to care for your parents properly, could cause you to lose points. And in this world, your score becomes the ultimate truth of who you are — determining whether you can borrow money, get your children into the best schools or travel abroad; whether you get a room in a fancy hotel, a seat in a top restaurant — or even just get a date. This is not the dystopian superstate of Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” in which all-knowing police stop crime before it happens. But it could be China by 2020. It is the scenario contained in China’s ambitious plans to develop a far-reaching social credit system, a plan that the Communist Party hopes will build a culture of “sincerity” and a “harmonious socialist society” where “keeping trust is glorious.” A high-level policy document released in September listed the sanctions that could be imposed on any person or company deemed to have fallen short. The overriding principle: “If trust is broken in one place, restrictions are imposed everywhere.” A whole range of privileges would be denied, while people and companies breaking social trust would also be subject to expanded daily supervision and random inspections. The ambition is to collect every scrap of information available online about China’s companies and citizens in a single place — and then assign each of them a score based on their political, commercial, social and legal “credit.” The government hasn’t announced exactly how the plan will work — for example, how scores will be compiled and different qualities weighted against one another. But the idea is that good behavior will be rewarded and bad behavior punished, with the Communist Party acting as the ultimate judge. This is what China calls “Internet Plus,” but critics call a 21st-century police state. A version of Big Brother? Harnessing the power of big data and the ubiquity of smartphones, e-commerce and social media in a society where 700 million people live large parts of their lives online, the plan will also vacuum up court, police, banking, tax and employment records. Doctors, teachers, local governments and businesses could additionally be scored by citizens for their professionalism and probity. “China is moving towards a totalitarian society, where the government controls and affects individuals’ private lives,” said Beijing-based novelist and social commentator Murong Xuecun. “This is like Big Brother, who has all your information and can harm you in any way he wants.” At the heart of the social credit system is an attempt to control China’s vast, anarchic and poorly regulated market economy, to punish companies selling poisoned food or phony medicine, to expose doctors taking bribes and uncover con men preying on the vulnerable. “Fraud has become ever more common in society,” Lian Weiliang, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s main economic planning agency, said in April. “Swindlers have to pay a price.” Yet in Communist China, the plans inevitably take on an authoritarian aspect: This is not just about regulating the economy, but also about creating a new socialist utopia under the Communist Party’s benevolent guidance. “A huge part of Chinese political theater is to claim that there is an idealized future, a utopia to head towards,” said Rogier Creemers, a professor of law and governance at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Now after half a century of Leninism, and with technological developments that allow for the vast collection and processing of information, there is much less distance between the loftiness of the party’s ambition and its hypothetical capability of actually doing something,” he said. But the narrowing of that distance raises expectations, says Creemers, who adds that the party could be biting off more than it can chew. Assigning all of China’s people a social credit rating that weighs up and scores every aspect of their behavior would not only be a gigantic technological challenge but also thoroughly subjective — and could be extremely unpopular. “From a technological feasibility question to a political feasibility question, to actually get to a score, to roll this out across a population of 1.3 billion, that would be a huge challenge,” Creemers said. A target for hackers The Communist Party may be obsessed with control, but it is also sensitive to public opinion, and authorities were forced to backtrack after a pilot project in southern China in 2010 provoked a backlash. That project, launched in Jiangsu province’s Suining County in 2010, gave citizens points for good behavior, up to a maximum of 1,000. But a minor violation of traffic rules would cost someone 20 points, and running a red light, driving while drunk or paying a bribe would cost 50. Some of the penalties showed the party’s desire to regulate its citizens’ private lives — participating in anything deemed to be a cult or failing to care for elderly relatives incurred a 50-point penalty. Other penalties reflected the party’s obsession with maintaining public order and crushing any challenge to its authority — causing a “disturbance” that blocks party or government offices meant 50 points off; using the Internet to falsely accuse others resulted in a 100-point deduction. Winning a “national honor” — such as being classified as a model citizen or worker — added 100 points to someone’s score. On this basis, citizens were classified into four levels: Those given an “A” grade qualified for government support when starting a business and preferential treatment when applying to join the party, government or army; or applying for a promotion. People with “D” grades were excluded from official support or employment. The project provoked comparisons with the “good citizen cards” introduced by Japan’s occupying army in China in the 1930s. On social media, residents protested that this was “society turned upside down,” and it was citizens who should be grading government officials “and not the other way around.” The Suining government later told state media that it had revised the project, still recording social credit scores but abandoning the A-to-D classifications. Officials declined to be interviewed for this article. Despite the outcry in Suining, the central government seems determined to press ahead with its plans. Part of the reason is economic. With few people in China owning credit cards or borrowing money from banks, credit information is scarce. There is no national equivalent of the FICO score widely used in the United States to evaluate consumer credit risks. At the same time, the central government aims to police the sort of corporate malfeasance that saw tens of thousands of babies hospitalized after consuming adulterated milk and infant formula in 2008, and millions of children given compromised vaccines this year. Yet it is also an attempt to use the data to enforce a moral authority as designed by the Communist Party. The Cyberspace Administration of China wants anyone demonstrating “dishonest” online behavior blacklisted, while a leading academic has argued that a media blacklist of “irresponsible reporting”
would encourage greater self-discipline and morality in journalism. Lester Ross, partner-in-charge of the Beijing office of law firm WilmerHale, says the rules are designed to stop anyone “stepping out of line” and could intimidate lawyers seeking to put forward an aggressive defense of their clients. He sees echoes of the Cultural Revolution, in which Mao Zedong identified “five black categories” of people considered enemies of the revolution, including landlords, rich farmers and rightists, who were singled out for struggle sessions, persecution and re-education. Under the social credit plan, the punishments are less severe — prohibitions on riding in “soft sleeper” class on trains or going first class in planes, for example, or on staying at the finer hotels, traveling abroad or sending children to the best schools — but nonetheless far-reaching. Xuecun’s criticism of the government won him millions of followers on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, until the censors swung into action. He fears the new social credit plan could bring more problems for those who dare to speak out. “My social-media account has been canceled many times, so the government can say I am a dishonest person,” he said. “Then I can’t go abroad and can’t take the train.” Under government-approved pilot projects, eight private companies have set up credit databases that compile a wide range of online, financial and legal information. One of the most popular is Sesame Credit, part of the giant Alibaba e-commerce company that runs the world’s largest online shopping platform. Tens of millions of users with high scores have been able to rent cars and bicycles without leaving deposits, company officials say, and can avoid long lines at hospitals by paying fees after leaving with a few taps on a smartphone. The Baihe online dating site encourages users to display their Sesame Credit scores to attract potential partners; 15 percent of its users do so. One woman, who works in advertising but declined to be named to protect her privacy, said she had used Baihe for more than two years. Looking for people who display good Sesame Credit scores helps her weed out scammers, she said. “First I will look at his photo, then I will look at his profile,” she said. “He has to use real-name authentication. But I will trust him and talk to him if he has Sesame Credit.” But it is far from clear that the system will be safe from scams. William Glass, a threat intelligence analyst at cybersecurity expert FireEye, says a centralized system would be both vulnerable and immensely attractive to hackers. “There is a big market for this stuff, and as soon as this system sets up, there is great incentive for cybercriminals and even state-backed actors to go in, whether to steal information or even to alter it,” he said. “This system will be the ground truth of who you are. But considering that all this information is stored digitally, it is certainly not immutable, and people can potentially go in and change it.”
Belt & Road includes 5G that makes smart cities possible
Bruno Macaes, 2019, Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order, Bruno Maçães is a Portuguese politician, political scientist, business strategist, and author. He studied at the University of Lisbon and Harvard University, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation under Harvey Mansfield. He is currently a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute in Washington, Kindle, page number at the end of the card
Connectivity is not only or even primarily about roads and railways. Several projects are aimed at building telecommunication networks between Asia and Europe under the Belt and Road and create what the Chinese authorities call a “digital silk road” or a “community of shared destiny in cyberspace.” Xi Jinping himself has shown a strong interest in the concept. Inmarsat, a leader in providing mobile satellite services, was the only British company he visited during his state visit to London in October 2015. Around the same time, China and the European Union issued a declaration on the development of 5G mobile networks. The mobile technology is so important that it was highlighted in the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang during the National People’s Congress session in March 2017 and a report by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology predicted that 5G will drive 6.3 trillion yuan of economic output in the country by 2030. Massive overseas investment fits with China’s ambition to boost key technologies in artificial intelligence, big data, smart cities, the industrial internet and cloud computing. An early benefit will come from new opportunities for its e-commerce companies. Many of the Belt and Road countries are yet to experience a thriving e-commerce sector due to a lack of good digital infrastructure. Partly as a result of the initiative, Chinese online retail giants such as Alibaba will be spearheading the development of a truly global e-commerce market. Data will be managed on a large scale and large pools of data connected through new infrastructure and technological breakthroughs. In March 2018, the Guangzhou startup CloudWalk Technology signed a strategic partnership with the Zimbabwean government to begin a large-scale facial recognition program throughout the country. The agreement, part of the Belt and Road, will see the technology primarily used in security and law enforcement and will likely be expanded to other public programs. The project will help the government build a smart financial service network as well as introduce intelligent security applications at airports, railway stations and bus stations. In the process, Zimbabwe may be giving away valuable data as Chinese AI technologists stand to benefit from access to a database of millions of Zimbabwean faces. Rolling out the technology in a majority black population will allow CloudWalk to expand the algorithm’s training and to eliminate racial biases, getting ahead of US and European developers. As one commentator put it, this could very well be the latest example of Africa handing over natural resources to China.4 Maçães, Bruno. Belt and Road (p. 44). Hurst. Kindle Edition.
Smart cities are electronic panopticons that are vulnerable to hackers, likely to malfunction, exclude the poor, and discriminate against protect classes
Kelsey Finch, Westin Research Fellow, International Association of Privacy Professionals, 2015, Welcome to the Metropticon: Protecting Privacy in a Hyperconnected Town,” FORDHAM URBAN LAW JOURNAL v. 41, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2549&context=ulj,
Although privacy advocates may yet stand in for Jane Jacobs and other social reformers in this modern urban planning debate, it is far from clear that smart cities are mere panaceas. Smart cities bring cutting-edge monitoring, big data analysis, and innovative management technologies to the world of urban planning, promising to make cities “more livable, more efficient, more sustainable, and perhaps more democratic.”7 Of course, “clever cities will not necessarily be better ones.”8 There is a real risk that, rather than standing as “paragons of democracy, they could turn into electronic panopticons in which everybody is constantly watched.”9 They are vulnerable to attack by malicious hackers or malfunction in their complex systems and software, and they furnish new ways to exclude.the poor and covertly discriminate against protected classes.
Smart cities will met down
Kelsey Finch, Westin Research Fellow, International Association of Privacy Professionals, 2015, Welcome to the Metropticon: Protecting Privacy in a Hyperconnected Town,” FORDHAM URBAN LAW JOURNAL v. 41, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2549&context=ulj,
In his book, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, Anthony Townsend expressed alarm about smart cities becoming “buggy, brittle and bugged.”136 As with any complex interrelated technological infrastructure, smart city systems are vulnerable to attacks by hackers or software bugs causing extended blackouts, massive traffic jams, communications shutdowns, or wasteful water spills.137 Given that any device connected to the Internet is exposed to cyberattack, smart cities multiply the potential for security breaches that could impact critical systems. Over the past few years, cyberattacks on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems have multiplied in number and sophistication, ranging from a sole hacker disrupting a water utility in Illinois138 to powerful nation states launching a crippling assault on a nuclear reactor in Iran.1