On Dec. 13, China’s ruling communist regime deactivated their COVID-19 tracking app after easing pandemic restrictions. However, experts warn that the regime continues to track and monitor the Chinese populace through the data.
The state-controlled social media platform WeChat announced on its public account that the COVID-19 tracking app “Communications Itinerary Card” and health QR code installed on Chinese people’s cellphones through the platform had been deactivated on Tuesday.
The SMS, webpage, WeChat extension, and Alipay extension linked to the itinerary card were also deactivated simultaneously.
A passenger shows a green QR code on his phone to show his health status to security upon arrival at Wenzhou railway station in Wenzhou, Zhejiang on February 28, 2020. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)
In the past two and a half years, the “Communications Itinerary Card” and the health code have been used to track the identities of those who traveled to high-risk areas through their cell phone signals. They have become essential for anyone in China to travel, shop, or go to hospitals.
Zhong Shan, a communications engineer in Silicon Valley, told The Epoch Times on Dec. 12, “The app was first launched in March 2020. The information on the smartphone app includes the user’s encrypted mobile phone number, updated itinerary details, and the user’s past travel history, such as all countries or regions visited within the last 14 days, as well as Chinese cities where the user stayed for more than 4 hours.”
Zhong said, “now only the front-end application is shut down, but the data monitoring in the background is still running. It’s just that users can’t see their itinerary. But when the communist party, government, and various governmental departments want to check people’s travel data, they can still see it at any time. It’s deceiving the populace.”
He added that the trip code is an active recording and reporting process triggered by the user. Therefore, the development of this app was not only for data analysis but also to find preset tracking triggers for each user, making it very convenient to check and monitor.
“Without the itinerary code, citizens’ whereabouts can still be tracked at any time. There is just no need to display the itinerary. Moreover, the police cloud combined with police monitoring equipment has already been integrated with the Tencent digital products linkage [WeChat is a Tencent product]. This is a core asset of the technology.”
“QQ.FM Zhang Lei”, the account name of a former executive of a Chinese technology company who’s currently in the United States, posted on Twitter earlier: “In Guangzhou this July, I had dinner with a friend who is a policeman. He demonstrated one of his cell phones issued by the police department. He could take a picture of anyone with the police cellphone and look up the person’s various records, such as violations, hotel check-ins, criminal background records, etc. Just think about it, the travel itinerary code data in the future will definitely be a data interface for the police. The police can see everything about you when they want to see.”
Li Xi contributed to the report.
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