Authoritarian digital state: the “made in China” carnet de la patria submits Venezuelan citizens
The prestigious magazine Technology Review tells how the Chinese regime is heading to exercise total control of its citizens, who represent one third of the world’s population, paradoxically through the only instrument that can open the windows to freedom: technology. Remaking of this plan could already circulate in Venezuela
Por: Fiorella Perfetto
Counts the award-winning journalist Christina Larson in a call called “Who needs democracy if they have data? , for Technology Review magazine , how that brief history of the fiction writer Issac Asimov published in 1955 would already be a reality in China. The story refers to an experiment called “electronic democracy”: an individual selected to represent an entire population answered questions generated by a computer called Multivac. The machine took this information and calculated the results of an election that, in this way, would never have to happen.
It is clear that the issue for any authoritarian regime worth its salt is the same and revolves around the control of information and consequently – much more in the current times – of society. The case that narrates this article refers to the weapons that China uses to take control of its citizens and if it can bring a kind of democratic varnish, so much the better. Thus, the Chavez regime has found in the Asian nation an ally in the establishment of methods of social control and one of them is fashionable.
“How can one effectively govern a country that is home to one in five people on the planet, with an increasingly complex economy and society that does not allow public debate, civil activism or electoral feedback? How do you gather enough information to really make decisions ?, and how a government that does not invite its citizens to participate could generate confidence and bend public behavior without putting the police at every door? “, Are the questions that have motivated the Chinese president Xi Jinping to invest in technology.
“Hu Jintao, the Chinese leader from 2002 to 2012, had tried to solve these problems by allowing a moderate democratic thaw, allowing the avenues of grievances to reach the ruling class. His successor, Xi Jinping, has reversed that trend. Their strategy to understand and respond to what is happening in a nation of 1.4 billion citizens is based on a combination of surveillance, artificial intelligence and big data to monitor the lives and behavior of people in detail. “
Read also: “New sanctions for Venezuela, the figurehead, trapped in the war Iran – United States”
Cases like the much-discussed victory of Donald Trump as president of the United States for the alleged Russian intervention in the results, the rise of far-right parties in Europe and the reign of terror of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines are sold as arguments to justify further control over Chinese society “and many critics see it as the inherent problems of democracy, especially populism, instability or precariously personalized leadership,” reads the note.
However, since Beijing, a lethal combination for citizen freedoms has been established. Since becoming Communist Party of China General Secretary in 2012, Xi has presented a series of ambitious plans for the country, many of them rooted in technology, including the goal of becoming the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.
“Xi has asked for a cyber sovereignty to improve censorship and exercise total control over the national internet. He said last May, during a meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, that technology was the key to achieving the great goal of building a socialist and modernized nation”
The Cyber Censorship and Punishments of Xi Jinping
The report reflects the opinion of Martin Chorzempa, a member of the Perterson Institute of International Economics in Washington, DC, who believes that no government has a more ambitious and far-reaching plan to harness the power of data to change the way it governs that the Chinese government.
In these times, citizen protests are increasingly controlled, as well as anyone who tries to express disagreement with the regime. “Chinese leaders have wanted for a long time to take advantage of public sentiment without opening the door to criticism of the authorities. For most of China’s imperial and modern history, there has been a tradition in which disgruntled people working in the field travel to Beijing and hold small demonstrations as public petitioners . The idea is that if the local authorities did not understand or did not care about their grievances, the emperor could show better judgment. “
That was the case at least while Hu Jintao was in power. “Some members of the Communist Party saw limited openness as a possible way of exposing and correcting certain types of problems. Blogs, anti-corruption journalists, human rights lawyers and critics who denounced local corruption, prompted public debate towards the end of Hu’s government. But his successor, Xi Jinping, receives from the beginning of his mandate, a daily report on concerns and disturbances of the public on social networks, according to a former US official with knowledge of the matter. In recent years, the petitioners have come to the capital to call attention to scandals such as illegal seizures of land by local authorities and contaminated milk powder, “
“The police are increasingly preventing the petitioners from reaching Beijing. Now trains require national IDs (a digital card) to buy tickets, which makes it easier for authorities to identify potential troublemakers like those who have protested against the government in the past”, says Maya Wang, China’s lead researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Many of these citizens are detained on the platforms of the trains. “Bloggers, activists and lawyers are also being systematically silenced or imprisoned, as if the data could give the government the same information without any of the uncomfortable problems of freedom.”
Read also: “Genocide Watch: model that predicts road to genocide warning about Venezuela“
The information technology or the so-called digital revolution that began to penetrate human fibers and be part of everyday life from the eighties, made drool the Chinese rulers who saw in it a powerful tool to gather information and control the culture , to make the Chinese more “modern” and more “governable,” says the text. “Later developments, including faster processors, have brought that vision closer.”
Even if we do not have a model that correctly explains the technology-government connection in China, they have implemented successful “initiatives” that allow them to collect data on people and companies. “These include the Social Credit System of the State Council of 2014, the Cybersecurity Act of 2016, several local and private experiments in social credit schemes, smart city and technology-based policies in the western region of Xinjiang. . They often involve partnerships between the government and technology companies in China. ” Then, from these databases, so-called blacklists are generated.
“Over the past five years, China’s judicial system has published the names of people who have not paid fines or served their sentences. Under the new social credit regulations, this list is shared with several companies and government agencies. The people on the list have been blocked from borrowing money, booking flights or staying at hotels (…) “.
It is further explained that one of the biggest concerns is that because China lacks an independent judiciary, citizens have no recourse to dispute false or inaccurate accusations. Some have found their names added to the blacklists of travel without notification after a judicial decision they did not know. Activists and investigative journalists are monitored according to another system and people who entered drug rehabilitation are monitored by a different monitoring system. “It’s immensely difficult to get any of these lists out,” Wang recalls.
This is how the Chinese government has eliminated almost all critical voices since 2012 and the risks of challenging the system, even in relatively small ways. The available information is deeply flawed, the systematic falsification of data is massive, from the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the use of hydroelectric energy, they are opaque data.
Some of the tools currently used in this country recall the television series person of interest , in which cameras placed throughout the city identify each individual through the use of facial recognition programs. These cameras are used by the Chinese government “to identify and shame the jay walkers (imprudent pedestrians who cross the streets in places not allowed) in some cities by projecting their faces on billboards with their data included. It is certainly a tool whose application, for example, in Venezuela would be far from possible.
“I do not buy the complete package that China is behind everything or that the Chinese recipe can be applied in Venezuela. The issue of China and its citizens and what they are doing there is a matter of monitoring, of monitoring, not exactly of control, that they exercised before with, for example, the existence of a single party or that you can not be dissident. But also this infrastructure of cameras is very expensive and you must add facial recognition applications. Venezuela is not at the level of that or those applications, unless they want to do something more controlled, but it would be something fashionable and not for political control of the population, “argues Luis Carlos Diaz, an expert journalist on the subject of technology.
We must take into account what came first and not demonize technological advances, due to the fact that authoritarian regimes take hold of them to subdue the population. “It is not technology that created the policies, but technology that greatly expands the types of data that the Chinese government can collect on individuals,” says Richard McGregor, principal investigator at the Lowy Institute. “The Internet in China acts as a digital intelligence service managed in real time,” says the note.
“Authoritarian digital state”
Xiao Qiang, a communications professor at the University of California at Berkeley, nicknamed the Chinese government that uses data to exercise social control as “a totalitarian digital state . ” A characteristic example that recalls the worst oppressive systems in the world is in the west of the country.
There are regions in which the predominantly Muslim population is controlled by these systems and by digital records of all its inhabitants. In its streets, once full of life, today reigns silence and solitude after the persecutions against these communities.
“In the western city of Kashgar, many of the houses and family shops on the main streets are boarded up (the windows are closed to the outside) and the public squares are empty. When I visited in 2013, it was clear that Kashgar was already a segregated city: the Han and Uighur populations lived and worked in different sections of the city, but at night it was also a lively and often noisy place, where the sounds of the call to prayer were interspersed with dance music from local clubs and conversations of old people sitting late in plastic chairs in the courtyards. Today the city is eerily silent; The public life of the neighborhood has practically disappeared, “said Emily Feng, a reporter for The Financial Times.
It also says that one in 10 inhabitants of the region were confined in “reeducation camps”, surrounded by security fences and wires. “Those who remain at liberty are afraid,” the report says.
“In the last two years, thousands of checkpoints have been established in which passersby must present their face and their national identification card to drive on a highway, enter a mosque or visit a shopping center. They must install tracking applications designed by the government on their smartphones, which monitor their online contacts and the web pages they have visited. Police officers visit local homes regularly to gather more information about how many people live in the home, how their relationships with their neighbors are, how many times they pray daily, if they have traveled abroad and what books they have. ” All this information is configuring the file of each Chinese citizen.
These data go to a public safety system along with other records that capture information from banking history to family planning. “The computer program adds all the data from these different sources and points out who could become a threat to the authorities,” says Wang.
Desires do not pretend, but how do they hurt and China knows
Although the differences between the application of these technological tools in China and Venezuela are abysmal, they are united by the desire of authoritarian regimes: the use of information to exercise social control, spy on or tear part of private life from those people considered “of interest”. Thus, despite the fact that Venezuela is one of the countries with the worst technological performance, the regime uses what is viable to try to exercise greater social control, in its own way. And there the card of the country emerges with strength.
“ What Venezuela does in terms of control and monitoring and what is most serious, is the use of the country’s identity card. Previously and in biometric terms, what they did with the identity traces was very serious but fortunately they did not finish applying it completely. In addition, the databases are not centralized or work completely or in real time. This was used to make people afraid that the same voter registration would be used to buy flour and basically say that if you do not vote for the government, you do not eat. In essence it was that, fear, but to put it into practice is more complicated “, explains Díaz.
The second control after that biometric is that of the country’s card, which is not biometric but you do have information in a database that is enabled to do certain things and that is the most serious thing at this moment. But from the technological point of view, that is at a very low level, it is simply being on a government list, which can enable for other things, but it has nothing to do with the sophistication of for example tracking people where he is at all times, “he said. “I do not buy any other theory, what is here is very ramplón, very basic, but it is a massive violation of human rights in Venezuela, only control with the country’s card is already monstrous,” he concluded.
In spite of how rudimentary its use as a possible method of control and capture of information may seem, the use of this identification system – mandatory de facto - has the power to subject the population, as it happens in China with the card of national identification and that now the Venezuelan regime wants to establish in the country to exercise control over the use of fuel, pension for the elderly, access to food or to exercise the right to vote.
In the case of Venezuela, the use of the national identity card as a mechanism for collecting information and social control and its registration through personal terminals generate no doubt about the scope that it could have in the country.
The professor Carmen Beatriz Fernández, expert in political marketing and consultancy, observes not without concern the scope that this tool can have, beyond its technological performance.
“The reality is that we do not really know how sophisticated the system can be, but something that is not too difficult to do since the card can be associated with your smartphone, it is knowing how you move and where, how much you communicate , in and out. It is not difficult to make digital sociograms, in the understanding that leadership also has its digital expression and identify patterns of personal interrelations. Undoubtedly, the identity card of the country is an instrument for political and social domination, which aims to go beyond electoral control. It is a mistake to see it as an instrument that only serves for the distribution of subsidies”, he said.
ZTE without a license in the United States, but in Venezuela…
La tecnología detrás de este documento de identidad, también pasó por China. En febrero del año pasado, Cantv y la china ZTE firmaron un acuerdo“para fortalecer el carnet de la patria”, con el objetivo de “impulsar el desarrollo del sistema de Capacidad Transaccional para el carnet de la patria, mediante la colaboración y cooperación tecnológica, cuya ejecución involucra el desarrollo de obras conjuntas, investigación técnica, transferencia tecnológica, además de la identificación de nuevas oportunidades de financiamiento para Cantv”. El acuerdo fue firmado por el presidente de Cantv, Manuel Fernández, y la empresa china ZTE.
With great fanfare, the scope of the project was sold as a sign of the fruitful alliance with China and the more than 62,000 million dollars that according to the official note have entered the country as a product of hundreds of bilateral agreements. “In the telecommunications and technology sector, we can name, as an example, the construction and launch of Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Miranda satellites , as well as the push for cutting-edge technology in fixed and mobile telephony equipment for the inclusion of the people sovereign to the telecommunications that Cantv and Movilnet drive throughout Venezuela. “
In March 2015 , Cantv announced that its workers would be formed in China as part of the “technology transfer”. That same year Venezuela announced the “new strategic plans” in the framework of President Nicolás Maduro’s visit to China. There were no doubts about the control that Asians have over the Venezuelan telecommunications system.
“With the support of the company ZTE, with which we maintain agreements through Vtelca, we already have installed the capacity to produce six million state-of-the-art cellular equipment per year; a part of that production will be for export (…) “. In addition, the government announced a smart schools project, a “popular protection system for peace or SP3 in terms of technological platform – proposed by President Maduro to guarantee peace in the country, which will be designed and executed hand in hand with our commercial allies in China, “the Minister for University Education, Science and Technology, Manuel Fernández, said at the time.
He also said that “Cantv’s fixed telecommunications networks that guarantee Voice and Internet services, as well as mobile voice services, will work on several projects with the support of the ZTE company and the implementation of the 4G technology by which a set of Movilnet radio bases will be deployed this year with the support of this sister company in what constitutes a fourth line of collaboration “.
The flourishes of the official texts do not seem to have real support. “Yes, China sold the satellites, which have nothing to do with this type of monitoring technology. The Miranda satellite is mainly of observation but at another scale and the Simón Bolívar satellite is for communications, which have also been underutilized. They did not take advantage of their resources, the infrastructure was not developed, it was a waste of money to buy a fashionthing , “explained the expert.
“They are mainly suppliers of parts for telecommunication plants, such as Huawei and these brands. They were offering pieces for Cantv, Movilnet and Venezuelan telecom companies because the Government made a contract with China where this country gave us those things and not money and now Venezuela owes them and pays with oil, but that is not very sophisticated either ” , full.
In a report of the Chinese portal Xinhuanet , he says that “the joint venture between Venezolana de Industrias Tecnológicas (VIT) and the multinational IT company of China, with the Inspur Group, as a member, will seek to increase its assembly operation of computers for export” , like the mobile phone manufacturers Venezolana de Telecomunicaciones (VTELCA) and the Chinese ZTE Corporation.
But this Cantv – ZTE partnership gives for much more. It is from this marriage that the identity card of the country has taken on a much more determining aspect in Venezuelan society. Not only is the requirement to receive boxes of food from the Local Committees for Supply and Production (Clap), but now only through the card of the country will be able to have access to fuel or seniors to collect their pension. In the past elections of Governors in 2017, the card was used as a requirement to vote, while in the press the “facilities” offered by its use to pay, for example telephone bills, are announced.
“All that information is stored and you can use it, but also because the registration is made with the use of your terminal (the mobile phone), they could access private information. We also know that one of its main objectives is the votes and that is why they want to consolidate this card, to then use that information for what they propose, for example, to add votes for them. The ZTE company must be afraid for this relationship because it has many problems at this time with the United States Government, “he told a computer engineer who works for a state agency linked to this technology.
But, it is necessary to place the magnifying glass on ZTE and the specific weight that the technology giant has for Beijing, in addition to the recent news that keeps its operations in the pillory.
Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment (ZTE) has stood out for manufacturing economical smartphones whose largest market targets developing countries. Its radius of commercial influence extends to 160 countries and close to 65,000 workers, according to the records published on its website.
The Chinese firm then began to exploit the arguments of “national security” as a very appetizing sales hook, especially for authoritarian regimes. Under this approach is that the strategic operation of ZTE works, reports the newspaper The New York Times.
“That makes him an important geopolitical pawn for Beijing, as an innovator and as a builder of projects financed by the State abroad. If China wants to improve its ties with a government in the developing world, it often offers loans that can be used to establish a cellular network with ZTE, says the US newspaper. Not in vain, Venezuela closed the most recent agreement with this country with a financing line of 2,000 million dollars.
We must not lose sight of the fact that in spite of the huge economic crisis that the country is going through, the corruption or inefficiency that reigns in every corner of the government, China has command within the Venezuelan state telephone company and has established more than 400 bilateral agreements with Venezuela in various areas since the arrival of Chavismo in 1999, according to the Observatory of Chinese Politics.
“In the long term, China hopes that companies like ZTE will become powers that can help a country to become independent from US technology firms, which Beijing considers as security threats because of the possibility that they could help Washington spy.”
However, in its eagerness to go further than Uncle Sam, the technology giant transgressed the laws and that has cost him several billions of dollars, when negotiating deals with countries sanctioned by the United States, such as Iran, Sudan, Korea. of the North, Syria and Cuba. The penalty was imposed from the Department of Commerce and met last May, despite President Trump’s desire to “save” the company from the penalty.
Read also: To “ease” economic crisis, the Russian giant Rosneft gave shares to Chinese consortium
The problem is generated because although the phones are of the ZTE brand, most of its components, like the processors, are American. “If ZTE sells a smartphone to North Korea, it could also be selling a Qualcomm chip inside that phone. That is illegal under US sanctions that prohibit the sale of their technology to embargoed countries. “
Filtered documents on the case exposed how senior ZTE executives warned of this risk. Another material showed a flow chart to follow to avoid US sanctions. “Last year, ZTE acknowledged his fault and paid a fine and had to pay around one billion dollars.”
But the punishment for being a company transgressing the laws did not stop there. Last April, “federal officials said that ZTE had violated its agreement with the United States because it did not punish top management for violating sanctions. Instead, ZTE paid them bonuses and lied about it. As a punishment, the State Department prohibited US technology companies from selling their products to ZTE for seven years, “the newspaper reported.
“That means there are no Qualcomm chips or Android software for their phones, nor American chips or other components for their cellular equipment. Analysts estimate that four-fifths of ZTE products are manufactured by US companies. This is how ZTE entered into a tailspin when it affirmed that it had closed important operations and is in a very severe economic situation “
This case marked a struggle between the United States and China that still persists and worsens because of the mutual distrust that exists about the possibility that espionage could be carried out through these terminals.
