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Honey bees enjoy a good reputation. They pollinate flowers, make honey, have an intriguing caste system and leave humans mostly alone. The Chinese government, no ill-will intended, enjoys a less stellar reputation, partly because of its tendency to find out as much about its citizens as possible. The mass collection of personal data in China has already made several headlines in the past. Unbeknownst to many, tourists are also spied upon, as has recently been discovered when "honey bee", a government-sanctioned spyware, was exposed and experts zeroed in on the details.
If you travel from Kyrgyzstan to Xinjiang by land, you'll invariably have to hand over your unlocked cellphone to customs officials. That's when "Fengcai", which translates to "gathering honey bee", will be installed on your device. This busy bee will dig deep into your system and send anything related to contacts, SMS, locations, calendar events and social media to government PCs. It's a neat way to create a comprehensive user profile on the fly. Naturally, a blacklist with roughly 73,000 files is also used to find "compromising" material and unmask "enemies of the people", mainly in the context of Islamic terrorism.
Positives will instantly trigger an acoustic warning signal. Upon completion of the scan, the app will be removed – unless the officer forgets to do so! That's what happened to a tourist, who handed over a copy the "busy bee" to the press. Several newspapers, TV stations and international research teams then put in the work, cracked the code and revealed many of the app's secrets. By the way, the app is Android-only but a, yet to be identified, iOS-compatible edition is said to exist, too. Even more disturbing: Tourists are left completely in the dark about the scan.
On a positive note, "Fengcai" boasts superior usability, with a UI consisting of a whopping two buttons: one to send the data and another to remove the app. It's a fool-proof approach, likely to accommodate less tech-savvy customs officers. Further analysis of the app revealed the primary search items to be execution videos, propaganda, ISIS flags but also texts related to the Dalai Lama, Qur'an verses or books on the Arabic language. Music also seems to be of interest, e.g. the Japanese metal band "Unholy Grave", who have a Taiwan-friendly song in their repertoire. Naturally, So far, only 500 of the 73,000 potentially wanted files have been identified. Maybe, we're in for a few surprises. My guess would be the classic song "Sweet Home Alabama".
The closely-guarded border between Kyrgyzstan
It's no accident the software is presently being tested in Xinjiang. Not only is Xinjiang a remote location that is out of the public focus, but it's also home to the Uyghurs, who've been exposed to a great degree of government surveillance and have come to expect, and accept, their misery. Being Muslim, the government puts them under general suspicion and tracks their every move, including when they enter their Mosques. Their phones are openly infiltrated with spyware and their data is fed into the "Integrated Joint Operations Platform", accessible by police and government agencies.
If you now believe China's approach to be without precedent, you're wrong, sadly. US border officials are increasingly demanding access to cellphones of foreigners seeking to enter the country. This is called secondary inspection and extends to both cellphones and laptop computers. Individuals who refuse to comply with this massive privacy intrusion can be barred from entering the country. Only US citizens have the right to object to this virtual striptease while still being let in. It is estimated that 30,000 tourists are affected by this practice every year. Legally, these arbitrary searches are controversial as they are prohibited within national borders by the fourth amendment. Still, national security apparently outweighs the right to privacy. After all, no-one forces you to enter the US so, if you object, feel free to stay out, right?
What I would like to know: Would you consent to such a search or do feel border officials are exceeding their authority? Would this be enough to make you turn back and fly home?
Dear readers,
We'll be taking a short summer break to recharge our batteries. Have a great summer and stay with us!
Very interesting article. Raises the question, "should we purchase Chinese cellphones?". I have one and it is very good but!!! Am I being spied on?
Most of us wouldn't know if hidden apps send information to foreign servers.
When I tole my nephew this, he laughed at me
He said he worked on a similar project some 20/30years
ago in the US and he showed me his old model Nokia
and said he has never never used a smart phone, let alone
apple.
I search on internet using "smartphone spy app and I came up
with at least 5: spyera, theone spy, mspy, highstermobil.
u can do your own search.
As usual western media, sepcially the US, always view China
as the bad guy.
Do you know that the phone spy, facial recogniation tools
are used in China as social credit system (just like Alibaba's
tmail cum alipay system) and rewards those with good
social behaviour and punish those with bad, eg. jaywalking,
Beijing bikina(men exposing their belly button because of heat)
bully, etcetc.
Uesd in the right way, they are good. In the old days, corrupt
officials coupled with gangsters and greedy buzmen had terrorised China for decades. It is good that the current govt
recognise these faults and aim to corrent them (they are not
even reported or admitted in the past)
As for the Ulgur, I had my doubts abt western report too.
jack Ma and his partners in Alibaba have just set up a 410Myuan(i think) fund to helpa femal teachers collegae
in Tibet (or Xinjianng, as the news in AOL search from Indian
Times and Yahoo disappeared after two days of posting)
The lamas in Tibet or the Ulgurs in Xinjaing of course will not
like this. There are detention camps in Xinjaing no dobut, but
I am there are technical schools to train the youth to acquiire
useful skills. For those of u who do not know, in my country
which is multi-racial, the Malays are allowed to run their muslim madrasah shools in their own way. But for years they
teach Arab and Malay, religion topics. and very litte sicence
or mathsor English. So the govt stepped and force them to
include other subjects else the graduates can never find a job
in a moden society. I dont know abt Malaysia, Indonesia
or Bangledash, or the middle east, I believe the situation is the same, and even worse for the female. So u see, u should
see these things from other angles. Dont believe everything the Western median say.
Hi Sven,
I am wondering if a nano chip is hidden in a corner of a smart 'phone/tablet/laptop/fit-bit/ considering the huge amount of generic hardware for those products that are produced in China.
Lateral thinking has to consider that if a person carries a file / info free phone, lap-top etc; on a trip to circumvent a search, the nano chip is undetectable and continues sending information to the tracker of the chip.
Leave the tablet and phone at home before going on an overseas trip, take a normal camera with hardware made in China, lots of nano components inside?
How come only these two Giants who are fighting to death over the 5G are doing this privacy intrusion?
This reminds me of my uncle in the'70 who was almost to be arrested because the secret police after they counting all his goods and comparing with his salary-was even-, found in the atic an old box full with old socks and they stayed over night to calculate their value at the highest price on market to prove his guilty!
Please don't ever forget the meaning of the precious word named: Liberty!
All the best for everyone here!
I don't own a cell phone so I don't care!
On June 17, Sir Geoffrey Nice, who chaired the London-based China Tribunal to investigate allegations of forced live organ harvesting by the Chinese regime (confirmed to be going on for at least 20 years), published his judgement:
"Governments and any who interact in any substantial way with the PRC including:
Doctors and medical institutions;
Industry, and businesses, most specifically airlines, travel companies, financial services businesses, law firms and pharmaceutical and insurance companies together with individual tourists,
Educational establishments;
Arts establishments
should now recognise that they are, to the extent revealed above, interacting with a criminal state."
https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/
So no one should have China on their list of places to visit, at least not until the organ harvesting Xi & the rest of the ghouls of his cult of Mao terrorist regime are taken down, & China is free!
No doubt this sort of 'border security' intrusion will become more common, whichever country we may travel to -- if we must? So we either accept it or don't go there at all.
I have not yet used any Cloud facilities, but surely one could store all the contacts in a Cloud file and then only have to remember one login and password to read it whenever/wherever needed.
Or is that too simple, or too easy for 'them' to access?
Keep up the paranoia :-)
Remind me never to go there.
I choose to travel to Canada, not USA.
A great insight Sven.
Countries who set themselves up as Major Powers, spy versus spy on each others' movements.
Mature adults of each nation who appear to have a lower mentality than monkeys playing video games, for what outcome is expected by spying.
Earth, a speck of rock in space with a finite life controlled by a Sun, mature men with a low mentality want to control every portion the rock and water.
All are selfish, self-opinionated, narcissistic lunatics forging blindly forward into oblivion where there are no winners.
Good research, Sven.
Perhaps it is better not to cross into China via an extremely politically sensitive region.
I suppose travellers could frustrate border officials by buying one of those really cheap, basic smartphones before leaving their home country, and not install anything on it. Alternatively, install a non-android ROM that Honey Bee won't work on.
A riskier move could be to put your daily smartphone into your case, and have the cheap and empty smartphone (or maybe with a few quick snaps of the other country) in your pocket.
Yes I would let anyone have a go on my cell phone. They would be bored to death. You can no longer cross the border between Canada and the United States without giving access to cell, tablet or a laptop. It's done in the name of "national security" the new buzzword from the US.
I surprised them with nothing other than the operating system and Ashampoo Office on the laptop. Only thing I wished for was a snack bar while they searched the laptop for three hours.
When crossing international boundaries I do not have my regular phone or laptop. I have "clean" phne and laptop used for these kinds of trips. No point attempting to argue with customs (or other officials) in a foreign country. Keeping minimal stuff on the temp phone and laptop minimizes problems for me although they might be suspicious of how empty your devices are.
What I would like to know: Would you consent to such a search or do feel border officials are exceeding their authority? Would this be enough to make you turn back and fly home?
Don't go there in the first place, simple as that.