Online data leakage is a major problem in China. Local media reports describe how people with access to the data sell private details to fraudsters, suspicious spouses and anyone else, sometimes for just a few dollars per person. Leaks have become severe enough that police created their own company that handles data directly, skirting third-party systems.
A wide number of people and companies have access to the data underlying China’s mandatory identification card system through legitimate means. Companies with police connections use faces from ID cards to train facial-recognition systems. The card system also tracks fingerprints, faces, ethnicity and age.
A technology contractor called Shenfenbao, for example, had access to real-time records of every person staying in some 1,200 hotels in the southern city of Xiamen. In a demonstration, Lin Jiahong, a Shenfenbao salesman, searched one common name — a Chinese equivalent of “John Smith” — and came up with three guests, their hotels, room numbers, time of check-in, registered address, ethnicity and age.
“Through data on our platform, we can dig out all records of a particular person, and make a comprehensive analysis of the route of activities of this person,” said Mr. Lin, who added that his company also offered algorithms to flag women who check into multiple hotels in one night for suspicion of prostitution.
Signs of a backlash are brewing. In Shanghai, residents pushed back against a police plan to install facial-recognition cameras in a building complex. In Zhejiang Province, a professor filed a lawsuit against a zoo after it required mandatory facial-recognition scans for its members to get access.
In the Shijiachi residential complex, where the facial recognition replaced key card locks, the rebellion has been powered by wire and plywood.
On a brisk day in November, the doors of a number of buildings had been propped open with crude doorstops, making facial scans unnecessary.