On Dec. 13, China’s ruling communist regime deactivated their COVID-19 tracking app after easing pandemic restrictions. However, experts warn that the regime continues to track and monitor the Chinese populace through the data.
The state-controlled social media platform WeChat announced on its public account that the COVID-19 tracking app “Communications Itinerary Card” and health QR code installed on Chinese people’s cellphones through the platform had been deactivated on Tuesday.
The SMS, webpage, WeChat extension, and Alipay extension linked to the itinerary card were also deactivated simultaneously.
In the past two and a half years, the “Communications Itinerary Card” and the health code have been used to track the identities of those who traveled to high-risk areas through their cell phone signals. They have become essential for anyone in China to travel, shop, or go to hospitals.
Tracking in the Background Continues
Zhong said, “now only the front-end application is shut down, but the data monitoring in the background is still running. It’s just that users can’t see their itinerary. But when the communist party, government, and various governmental departments want to check people’s travel data, they can still see it at any time. It’s deceiving the populace.”“Tracking is a requirement that needs to be triggered actively. If it is not triggered, tracking needs to query a large amount of raw data, which is basically not feasible. But the trip code is basically a process of active recording and reporting triggered by the user, so the development of this product is not only Is it a data analysis, or a tracking trigger is preset for each user, so that it is very convenient to query.”
He explained for tracking to work, it needs to be actively triggered by the user, if it is not triggered, the tracking needs to query a large amount of raw data making it impossible. But the trip code already has data from the active recording and reporting process previously triggered by the user. Therefore, the development of this app was not only for data analysis but also to find preset tracking triggers for each user, making it very convenient to check and monitor even after the front end has been deactivated.
“Without the itinerary code, citizens’ whereabouts can still be tracked at any time. There is just no need to display the itinerary on the front end to the user. Moreover, the police cloud combined with police monitoring equipment has already been integrated with the Tencent digital products linkage [WeChat is a Tencent product]. This is a core asset of the technology.”
“QQ.FM Zhang Lei”, the account name of a former executive of a Chinese technology company who’s currently in the United States, posted on Twitter earlier: “In Guangzhou this July, I had dinner with a friend who is a policeman. He demonstrated one of his cell phones issued by the police department. He could take a picture of anyone with the police cellphone and look up the person’s various records, such as violations, hotel check-ins, criminal background records, etc. Just think about it, the travel itinerary code data in the future will definitely be a data interface for the police. The police can see everything about you when they want to see.”
The CCP suddenly abandoned its tough stance on COVID-19, halted mandatory mass PCR testing, and allowed people with mild symptoms to quarantine at home instead of dragging them to central makeshift isolation facilities.
