Recently The New York Times reported the following:
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| The dashboard (Source: The NYT) |
How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners (1/2)
An unsecured police dashboard was a rare window into how
the authorities track foreigners by collecting and aggregating vast amounts of
private data.
Aug. 2, 2026, 12:03 a.m. ET
Most days, Marc Hofer, a cybersecurity researcher and
journalist based in Amsterdam, trawls the internet for clues about how China
surveils its citizens, a subject that has fascinated him since he worked there
as a foreign correspondent.
Mr. Hofer, 46, was doing his usual scan earlier this year when he came across something called “Dynamic Control Platform for Overseas Personnel.” It was a futuristic dashboard — like something from the movie “Minority Report” — that appeared to track foreigners in the northern Chinese city of Zhangjiakou, a popular skiing spot that co-hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The system’s dashboard said it tracked more than 700 foreign residents living in the city. In total, it had entries for nearly 12,000 people, which included fugitives, people from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as more than 300 foreign journalists. Some of them had not been to Zhangjiakou.
Suddenly, Mr. Hofer saw his own face — in a photograph taken
by Chinese immigration officials for their records. Next to it was his passport
number and the cellphone number he had used in China.
He was floored. “Whoever put that stuff in there had access to real data,” he recalled. He also noticed a list of users who had recently logged into the site — it included the names of police stations in Zhangjiakou and other cities.
China monitors its 1.4 billion people on an unparalleled scale, with the help of cameras, cellphone signals and national IDs. The database Mr. Hofer found offered a rare window into how extensively the Chinese authorities also surveil foreigners, displaying entries about people categorized by nationality, with their birth date, sex, marital status, address and occupation, and sometimes their religion.
It also included instances when they were captured on camera at traffic intersections, markets, shopping malls or other locations, including a mosque.
Chinese companies hoping to sell their surveillance platforms to the police often create demo web pages that use photos and information about people taken from social media. This was different, Mr. Hofer said: “This is more than some guys playing around, or a student, or a low-level project.”
That day, in January, he began downloading as much data as possible from the site. By May, it had been taken offline.
Designed for the Police
The New York Times found links between the platform and
Origin Dynamic, a Beijing company that provides robotics, surveillance services
and equipment to the police, according to public tender documents.
Origin Dynamic had filed a patent application in 2023 for a similar system, which it described as an “information interface for non-Chinese citizens” and was nearly identical to the Zhangjiakou platform in its design and functions. The company is owned in part by the city government of Yancheng in Jiangsu Province.
Origin Dynamic and the Zhangjiakou Public Security Bureau did not respond to requests for comment sent by email and fax.
Mr. Hofer, who shared the data he saved with The Times, believed that the dashboard had been designed for the Zhangjiakou Public Security Bureau, the city’s police department. It included information that only the Chinese authorities would have had access to, and the user log that Mr. Hofer saw listed eight police stations in Zhangjiakou and three from other cities.
It was not clear how, or if, the police have used the
database in their work. But its existence illustrates how the Chinese
authorities aggregate vast amounts of data from surveillance cameras, medical
records, bills, facial-recognition tools and other sources to monitor and
analyze the behavior of foreign residents. It had fields for places they
frequented, hospital visits and gas payments, as well as flights and trains
taken, including seat numbers.
For example, it logged the movements of a woman from Mongolia as she went from a residential compound in Zhangjiakou to shopping malls, restaurants and supermarkets. In some instances, the database indicated, she had been tracked using facial recognition.
(to be continued)
Translation
中國如何監控外國人（1/2）
一個未加密的警方數據看板罕見地揭示了當局如何透過收集和匯總大量私人數據來追蹤外國人
大多數時候，常駐阿姆斯特丹的網路安全研究員兼記者Marc Hofer都會在網絡上搜尋中國如何監控其公民的線索。自從他作為駐外記者在中國工作以來，這個話題就一直讓他著迷。
今年早些時候，46歲的Hofer先生像往常一樣進行網路搜尋時，偶然發現了一個名為「海外人員動態控制平台」的東西。那是一個充滿未來感的數據看板 - 就像電影Minority Report 裡的場景 - 似乎在追蹤居住在中國北方城市張家口的外國人。張家口是熱門滑雪勝地，也是2022年冬奧的聯合舉辦城市之一。
該系統的數據看板顯示，它追蹤了700多名居住在張家口的外國居民。總共記錄了近12,000人的信息，其中包括逃犯、香港和台灣居民，以及300多名外國記者。其中一些甚至從未到過張家口。
突然，Hofer先生看到了自己的照片 - 一張中國移民官員拍攝的存檔照片。照片旁邊是他的護照號碼和他在中國使用的手機號碼。
他震驚了。 他回憶道:「把這些資訊放進去的人肯定接觸了真實的數據」。他還注意到一個最近登入過該網站的用戶清單 - 其中包括張家口和其他城市的派出所名稱。
中國利用攝影機、手機訊號和國民身分證，以前所未有的規模監控其14億人口。Hofer先生發現的資料庫罕見地揭示了中國當局對外國人的監控範圍之廣，其中列出了按國籍分類的人員信息，包括出生日期、性別、婚姻狀況、住址、職業，有時甚至包括宗教信仰。
資料庫還記錄了他們在交通路口、市場、購物中心或其他場所（包括清真寺）被攝影機拍到的畫面。
一些希望向警方出售監控平台的中國公司通常會使用從社交媒體上獲取照片和個人資訊去製作示範網頁。Hofer先生說，這個資料庫有所不同：“這絕不是某些人玩玩而已，也不是某個學生項目或一個初級計劃。”
在一月份的某一天，他開始從該網站下載盡可能多的資料。到了五月份，網站已經下線。
專為警方設計
《紐約時報》發現，根據公開招標文件，該平台與北京一家名為Origin
Dynamic的公司有關連。
Origin Dynamic是一家為警方提供機器人、監控服務和設備的公司。
Origin Dynamic曾在2023年為類似系統提交專利申請，該公司將其描述為 “面向非中國公民的資訊介面” ，其設計和功能幾乎與張家口平台完全相同。該公司部分股權由江蘇省鹽城市政府持有。
Origin Dynamic和張家口市公安局均未回覆透過電子郵件和傳真發送的置評請求。
Hofer先生與《紐約時報》分享了他保存的數據。他認為，該數據看板是為張家口市公安局（即該市的公安機關）設計的。其中包含只有中國當局才能接觸到的信息，Hofer先生看到的使用者日誌列出了張家口的八個派出所和來自其他城市的三個派出所。
目前尚不清楚警方是否以及如何在工作中使用該資料庫。但它的存在表明，中國當局如何匯集來自監視攝影機、醫療記錄、帳單、人臉識別工具和其他來源的大量數據，以監控和分析外國居民的行為。資料庫包含他們常去的地點、就醫記錄、加油記錄，以及搭乘的航班和火車資訊，包括座位號碼。
例如，它記錄了一位蒙古籍女性從張家口的一個住宅小區到購物中心、餐廳和超市的行踪。資料庫顯示，在某些情況下，她曾被使用人臉辨識技術追蹤。
（待續）
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