[photopress:IT_Wang_Jianzhou__China_Mobile.jpg,full,alignright]In Davos last week up came the fact the Chinese government can spy on the country’s 500 million mobile phone users.
Wang Jianzhou, the CEO of China Mobile Communications Corporation, China’s biggest mobile phone company which has more than 300 million subscribers, said the company had unlimited access to the personal data of its customers and handed it over to Chinese security officials when demanded.
US Congressman Ed Markey described this as ‘bone-chilling’ and it was said it sent shivers through an audience of telecom experts at the World Economic Forum who immediately saw the potential for misuse and surveillance.
Wang Jianzhou was explaining how the company could use the personal data of its customers to sell advertising and services to them based on knowledge of where they were and what they were doing.
When pressed about the privacy and security implications of this, he added: ‘We can access the information and see where someone is, but we never give this information away . . . only if the security authorities ask for it.’
Ed Markey, who is chairman of the US House of Representatives subcommittee on telecommunications, contrasted the situation with the checks and controls in place in the United States, where a court order is required for the government to check phone records.
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University in Britain, stressed how the mobile phone had become a serious threat to privacy in all countries.
The shock horror reaction of the United States is, politely, high farce.
Similar facilities exist and are used to my quite, quite certain knowledge in both the UK and the United States without any court order being involved. The difference is the people who do this do not make admissions about it in public.
Source: AFP