Barackface: surveillance

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Friday, May 30, 2025

Trump's Expansion of Surveillance Powers And Palantir

Trump appears to be building an unprecedented spy machine that could track Americans
Data firm is building 'detailed portraits of Americans' on Trump's order: report

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Recent reports indicate that the Trump administration has enlisted Palantir Technologies to develop a comprehensive database compiling extensive personal information on American citizens. This initiative raises significant concerns about privacy, civil liberties, and the potential for governmental overreach.

Palantir's Role in Data Collection

Palantir Technologies, co-founded by Peter Thiel, has been tasked with creating a "master list" of personal information on Americans. This database aims to consolidate various data points, potentially including financial records, social media activity, and other personal details. The objective is to provide the government with an unprecedented level of insight into the lives of its citizens.(Facebook)

Expansion of Surveillance Powers

The development of this database coincides with legislative changes that have expanded the government's surveillance capabilities. Notably, the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows for the warrantless collection of communications between Americans and foreign nationals. This expansion has raised alarms among privacy advocates and legal experts, who warn of potential abuses and the erosion of constitutional protections.(WIRED)

Historical Context and Concerns

This initiative is reminiscent of past controversies involving data collection and surveillance. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted the dangers of aggregating personal data for political purposes. Similarly, previous administrations have faced criticism for surveillance programs that infringed upon individual privacy rights.(Wikipedia)

Implications for Civil Liberties

The creation of such a comprehensive database poses significant risks to civil liberties. There is concern that the information could be used to target political opponents, suppress dissent, or engage in discriminatory practices. The lack of transparency and oversight further exacerbates these fears, as citizens may have little recourse to challenge or correct inaccuracies in the data collected about them.(WIRED)

Conclusion

The collaboration between the Trump administration and Palantir Technologies to build an extensive database on American citizens represents a profound shift in the relationship between the government and its people. While proponents argue that such measures are necessary for national security, the potential for misuse and the infringement on individual rights cannot be overlooked. It is imperative that robust safeguards, transparency, and oversight mechanisms are put in place to protect the privacy and freedoms of all Americans.(Yahoo)

The Trump administration and Palantir Technologies have articulated several reasons for developing a comprehensive database that compiles extensive personal information on American citizens. While the initiative is presented as a means to enhance national security and government efficiency, it has sparked significant concerns regarding privacy and civil liberties.

Stated Objectives of the Trump Administration

National Security and Fraud Prevention:
The administration asserts that consolidating data across federal agencies will bolster efforts to detect and prevent fraud, as well as identify potential security threats. By integrating information from sources such as the IRS, Social Security Administration, and immigration databases, the government aims to create a more robust system for safeguarding national interests.
Streamlining Immigration Enforcement:
A significant component of the initiative focuses on immigration control. The centralized database is intended to facilitate the identification, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants by providing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with rapid access to comprehensive personal data.
Enhancing Government Efficiency:
Under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, the administration emphasizes the need to modernize and streamline government operations. By breaking down data silos and enabling inter-agency data sharing, the initiative seeks to improve decision-making processes and reduce bureaucratic redundancies.

Palantir Technologies' Perspective

Leveraging Advanced Analytics for Public Good:
Palantir positions its involvement as a means to apply its data integration and analysis capabilities to serve national interests. The company highlights its software platforms, such as Gotham and Foundry, as tools that can provide real-time insights to government agencies, thereby enhancing their operational effectiveness.
Combatting Financial Crimes:
In collaboration with entities like Fannie Mae, Palantir is deploying its technology to detect and prevent mortgage fraud. This partnership exemplifies the company's commitment to using data analytics to address complex financial crimes that impact the economy and citizens' livelihoods.
Supporting Law Enforcement and Public Safety:
Palantir underscores its role in assisting law enforcement agencies by providing tools that can help identify criminal activities and potential threats. The company asserts that its technology enables more proactive and informed responses to public safety concerns.

Concerns and Criticisms

Despite the stated objectives, the initiative has faced substantial criticism from privacy advocates, legal experts, and civil liberties organizations. Concerns include the potential for mass surveillance, misuse of personal data, lack of transparency, and the erosion of constitutional protections. The aggregation of sensitive information without adequate oversight raises questions about the balance between national security and individual rights.

In summary, while the Trump administration and Palantir Technologies present the data consolidation initiative as a strategic move to enhance national security, improve government efficiency, and combat fraud, it has ignited a debate over privacy rights and the potential for governmental overreach. The long-term implications of such a comprehensive data system remain a subject of intense scrutiny and public discourse.

This is the heart of the modern democratic dilemma: If the government can see everything about us, why can’t we see everything about the government?

🧠 “A Mirror, Not a One-Way Window — Building Surveillance with Accountability”

Introduction: The Dangerous Asymmetry of Power

The Trump administration’s move to build an unprecedented surveillance system using Palantir raises urgent and legitimate fears. If the government builds a data machine that can “see everything” about the average American, we must ask: What safeguards exist to prevent abuse? And more importantly: Why is there no reverse mechanism—no transparency—that allows we the people to see into the workings of our government in the same detail?

Surveillance without accountability is not safety—it’s tyranny in waiting.

The Potential for Abuse

This kind of centralized, high-resolution surveillance system creates the conditions for:

Political targeting: Tracking political opponents, activists, or journalists under the guise of “security.”
Discrimination: Profiling based on race, religion, or immigration status.
Chilling dissent: Citizens fearful of speaking out due to digital scrutiny.
Data breaches: Hackers or foreign states accessing the vast trove of intimate data.
Unregulated partnerships: Data quietly shared with private companies, foreign actors, or partisan groups.

History warns us—from J. Edgar Hoover to the NSA’s PRISM program—that when surveillance powers grow unchecked, abuse always follows.

Necessary Safeguards

If any such system is to be allowed in a democratic society, these must be the non-negotiables:

Independent Oversight Boards
Panels composed of legal experts, civil rights advocates, technologists, and elected citizen-representatives.
Sunset Clauses
Regular reauthorization of the system, with rigorous public debate and congressional oversight.
Full Transparency Logs
Every query, every data pull, every access to the system logged, reviewed, and publicly auditable.
Robust Whistleblower Protections
Legal cover and rewards for insiders who expose misuse.
Absolute ban on political use
Surveillance must never be used to monitor peaceful dissent, campaign strategy, or voter activity.

The Case for Reverse Surveillance and Radical Government Transparency

What if we flipped the script?

If taxpayers are footing the bill for Palantir and this powerful data machine, why not build parallel features that turn it inward—on the government itself?

Here’s how it could work:

1. Track Every Dollar in Politics

Digital dashboards showing every campaign contribution in real time.
Who donated, to whom, and what that lawmaker voted on afterward.
Visual maps connecting special interests to specific laws.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” —Justice Louis Brandeis

2. Policy Proposal Explainers for the Public

Every new bill gets a plain-language explainer.
Video summaries, interactive walkthroughs, cost-benefit analyses.
Citizens can explore competing proposals (e.g., 3 versions of a healthcare bill).

Think of it like GitHub for laws—with comments, forks, edits, and discussions.

3. Open Committee Rooms

Real-time live-streams and searchable transcripts of all congressional committees and backroom negotiations.
AI-powered indexing for citizens to follow issues by topic or representative.

4. Participatory Legislative Platforms

Citizens can propose amendments, offer feedback, or vote on budget priorities.
Legislators must respond to the top public suggestions.
Think of it as participatory budgeting meets Reddit-style community debate.

5. Real-Time Spending Trackers

Want to know where your tax dollars go? Get an app.
Track military contracts, corporate subsidies, or government grant recipients.
Drill down to the local, state, and federal levels.

Why Can’t This Be Part of the Same Package?

It can be. In fact, it must be. If we are going to build a surveillance machine with the sophistication of Palantir, we need equal or greater investment in transparency and public participation tools.

Otherwise, we are building a digital dictatorship in slow motion.

Conclusion: Surveillance Must Be Symmetrical

What is being constructed right now—a high-powered, AI-enabled visibility platform aimed at citizens—should only be allowed if we also construct an even more powerful system aimed at holding power accountable.

Surveillance, like power, must flow both ways in a democracy.

Let us not allow the tools of tyranny to be built with our tax dollars while we are locked out of the room.

Instead, let’s demand systems where every American can peer into the halls of power, ask questions, and shape the future. Let’s make democracy smart, visible, and participatory.

Because the more the government sees of us, the more we must see of it.

Call to Action: Demand legislation today that mandates transparency tools alongside any federal surveillance infrastructure. Democracy deserves better than a one-way mirror.

View on Threads

Trump's Expansion of Surveillance Powers And Palantir https://t.co/XYB2tGMI8p @RepRoKhanna @RepAOC @RepPressley @RepJeffries
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 30, 2025

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— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) May 30, 2025

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Data Wars: China, Cyber Espionage, and the Global Surveillance Economy

Data Wars: China, Cyber Espionage, and the Global Surveillance Economy

In the 21st century, wars aren't just fought with missiles and tanks—they're waged with data. The line between espionage, surveillance, and corporate data harvesting has blurred beyond recognition. The U.S. and China, as two of the most powerful digital states, are at the center of this clash. But citizens—especially in democracies—are left exposed to vulnerabilities from both state and non-state actors. Let's explore the scope of this digital battleground.

China’s Cyber Espionage: Beyond Industrial Theft

China’s cyber strategy is multifaceted. While corporate and industrial espionage is well-documented—targeting sectors like aerospace, semiconductors, and biotechnology—Beijing’s surveillance state also reaches deeply into profiling individuals across borders.

Targeting Individuals: Chinese cyber units are known to hack personal data from government databases, educational institutions, healthcare systems, and social networks in the U.S. The 2015 OPM breach compromised data on over 21 million U.S. federal employees and contractors—an unprecedented blow.
Profiling and Influence: The aim is to build long-term psychological, political, and behavioral profiles. This can enable influence operations, blackmail, recruitment of assets, or social destabilization. Chinese apps and platforms, including TikTok, are accused of harvesting data that could potentially feed such profiling systems.

Digital Propaganda on Social Media

The Chinese government spends an estimated billions of dollars annually on information operations, with a portion focused on social media influence campaigns. These efforts are aimed at reshaping global narratives around Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and China's global rise.

Platforms like YouTube, Twitter (X), Facebook, and TikTok have been hosts—wittingly or not—to bot networks, troll farms, and fake accounts that promote pro-China content or sow discord within U.S. society.

How Many Americans Are Profiled—and Why?

It’s impossible to know the exact number, but it’s safe to assume that tens of millions of U.S. citizens have been included in foreign data sets. The objectives range from:

Long-term intelligence gathering
Blackmail potential
Voter influence and manipulation
Military recruitment insight
Academic, technological, and diplomatic targeting

China’s Cyber Army vs Global Cybercrime Networks

China’s state-backed cyber force—reportedly over 100,000 strong—includes military, civilian contractors, and elite hacker groups like APT10 and APT41. But they’re not alone.

Globally, cyber scam groups from Russia, Nigeria, North Korea, and Eastern Europe also target U.S. citizens. These actors may not be political—but they are parasitic. Romance scams, IRS impersonation, tech support scams—these ploys steal billions annually.

Seniors: The Prime Targets

Seniors are especially vulnerable. Why?

Less familiarity with digital tools
More trusting behavior online
More likely to have savings or fixed income
Often socially isolated

The results: financial loss, identity theft, and emotional devastation.

The Next Wave: 5G, 6G, and Total Profiling

With 5G and eventually 6G, the amount of data collected per person will explode—real-time biometrics, location patterns, smart home behaviors, even neural interfaces. Profiling will no longer be retroactive—it will be predictive.

Governments and companies could know what you’re going to do before you do it. And this applies globally.

What Can Be Done?

For Individuals:

Use encrypted communications
Regularly update software and devices
Limit app permissions and delete unused accounts
Educate yourself and older loved ones about scams

For Governments:

Create cyber alliances akin to NATO—international cooperation against hostile state actors
Sanction and prosecute foreign cyber criminals
Promote privacy-first digital regulations and ethical AI standards

For Big Tech:

Move beyond self-regulation
Introduce global data justice frameworks
Compensate users in the Global South for data harvested
Embrace transparency in algorithmic design and content moderation

Is the U.S. Guilty Too? The Capitalist Surveillance State

Yes, and uncomfortably so. Google, Meta, Amazon, and others have turned data into the most valuable commodity on Earth. These companies often operate with little oversight, harvesting data in the Global South to train AI models, target ads, and sell insights—without meaningful compensation or ethical review.

This "data imperialism" risks creating a digital feudal system—where the richest nations and companies reap all the rewards, while the developing world becomes a data plantation.

Conclusion: A Fork in the Road

We’re at an inflection point. As technology races forward, societies must choose between surveillance capitalism and digital democracy. Between geopolitical weaponization of data and cross-border collaboration for privacy, fairness, and truth.

If left unchecked, the tools meant to empower humanity may instead enslave it. The battle for the soul of the internet—and the dignity of individual privacy—has only just begun.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

China Surveillance

China is ramping up its ability to spy on its nearly 1.4 billion people to new and disturbing levels, giving the world a blueprint for how to build a digital totalitarian state......... The United States and other countries use some of the same techniques to track terrorists or drug lords. Chinese cities want to use them to track everybody. ...... The rollout has come at the expense of personal privacy. The Times found that the authorities parked the personal data of millions of people on servers unprotected by even basic security measures. It also found that private contractors and middlemen have wide access to personal data collected by the Chinese government...... The surveillance networks are controlled by local police, as if county sheriffs in the United States ran their own personal versions of the National Security Agency. ..... the Chinese surveillance state is spreading past its borders. ..... “Each person’s data forms a trail” .... “It can be used by the government and it can be used by bosses at the big companies to track us. Our lives are worth about as much as dirt.” ..... This single system is part of a citywide surveillance network encompassing license plates, phone numbers, faces and social media information ....... how China turned one city into a virtual prison. ..... Even for China’s police, who enjoy broad powers to question and detain people, this level of control is unprecedented. Tracking people so closely once required cooperation from uncooperative institutions in Beijing. The state-run phone companies, for example, are often reluctant to share sensitive or lucrative data with local authorities ....... In recent years, Chinese police made use of fears of unrest to win more power and resources. ....... In Zhengzhou, police can use software to create lists of people. They can create virtual alarms for when a person approaches a particular location. They can get updates on people every hour or every day. They can monitor whom those people have met with, especially if both people are on a blacklist for some kind of infraction, from committing a crime to skipping a debt payment. ....... Police are not hiding their surveillance push. Even the perception of overwhelming surveillance can deter criminals and dissidents alike. ......... At the complex in Zhengzhou, residents were unfazed when told that the cameras and boxes were part of a sophisticated surveillance system. .......... Across China, unprotected databases hold information on students and teachers in schools, on online activity in internet cafes and on hotel stays and travel records. ....... Online data leakage is a major problem in China. Local media reports describe how people with access to the data sell private details to fraudsters, suspicious spouses and anyone else, sometimes for just a few dollars per person. ........ A technology contractor called Shenfenbao, for example, had access to real-time records of every person staying in some 1,200 hotels in the southern city of Xiamen. ....... Mr. Lin, who added that his company also offered algorithms to flag women who check into multiple hotels in one night for suspicion of prostitution. ....... Signs of a backlash are brewing. In Shanghai, residents pushed back against a police plan to install facial-recognition cameras in a building complex. In Zhejiang Province, a professor filed a lawsuit against a zoo after it required mandatory facial-recognition scans for its members to get access. ........... In the Shijiachi residential complex, where the facial recognition replaced key card locks, the rebellion has been powered by wire and plywood........ Agnes Ouyang was heading to work in Shenzhen last year when two police officers told her she had jaywalked and would need to show them her identity card. When she refused, she said, they grabbed her roughly and used a phone to snap a photo of her face......... Within moments, their facial-recognition system had identified her, and they issued her a ticket for about $3. ......
the country lacks a strong court system or other checks against government overreach. But outside the realm of politics, Chinese life could be freewheeling and chaotic thanks to lax enforcement or indifferent officials.
...... “Under Xi Jinping, we’re seeing the flowering of a police state.” ....... Chinese police now boast that facial-recognition systems regularly catch crooks. At a tourist island in the picturesque port city of Xiamen, authorities say they use facial recognition to catch unlicensed tour guides. Shanghai police have begun using helmets with a camera embedded in the front. Databases and procurement documents also show they search out the mentally ill, people with a history of drug use or government gadflies. ...........
“I said, ‘how did you find me?’” Ms. Ouyang said. “He said, ‘it’s easy for the police to find a person.’”
........ she worries about her future in a country where everything is watched and controlled........ “You’re uncomfortable with it,” she said. “But if you don’t do it, then there’s no possibility of living a life. There’s no way out.”

Friday, October 04, 2019

Raising The Stakes On Non Political Solution In Hong Kong

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam invokes emergency powers, announces face mask ban

Beijing and Carrie Lam are obviously nowhere near looking at the other four demands. They seem to think there is a police soltion to the whole situation. They want to tire out the protestors. They want to wait it out.

Your opponent will do what your opponent will do. But you have to chalk out your own strategy.

Leaderless is not a movement. Disorganized is not a movement. It bothers me that the Hong Kong protestors choose not to be politically organized.

The mask is a human reaction to the surveillance cameras. People don't want Big Brother to know where they are all the time. That invasion of privacy is so total. This is a global issue.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

China, US, Hong Kong, Xinjiang

China Lost the United States First I was enthralled by the apparent success of China’s development model, manifested in the urban landscapes of Beijing and Shanghai. ......... the inequitable ways in which China treats U.S. persons and companies at home and overseas. ...... the almost inevitable surveillance foreigners encounter from the moment they cross the border. Foreigners risk a complete abrogation of their individual rights and any form of legal recourse or due process upon entering the country—putting them, of course, in the same position as the vast majority of Chinese citizens. ....... the typical scrutiny that high-profile foreign businesspeople endure but fail to publicize for fear of retribution or the impact on their bottom line. ...... Outside of a few dozen special cases, there is effectively no route to permanent immigration or even established residence in China; even long-term foreign residents often deal with visa issuance on a year-by-year basis. Foreign employees are forced to pay into a pensions and social security system that no one, so far, has been able to tap into. ........ Foreign journalists, who are private citizens permitted to work in China, are treated as covert operatives of their country of origin and routinely have their visas revoked for doing their job.... China uses visa status, business licensing approvals, and professional credentials as political tools, rewarding those individuals and companies that toe the government line while banishing those that do not. Chinese state media, meanwhile, is free to spew government-backed narratives and disinformation throughout the Western world. ......... In time, China will become an isolated, techno-totalitarian state, with only a few sycophantic foreigners left to be paraded out by official media and claim that China remains open to foreign citizens and businesses alike. ...... in Xi’s China, the only end is the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party—at the expense of Chinese citizens and the rest of the global community. ...... China ought to start behaving like the benevolent global actor it claims to be. If it doesn’t, it will become a global pariah, risking the instability that it so often professes to avoid.

The End of Hong Kong Is Almost Here
Chinese Propaganda Paints Hong Kong as a Spoiled Brat Hong Kong protesters know how they see themselves. One crowdfunded statue of the “Goddess of Democracy”—adapted from an image originally adopted during protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989—depicts the archetypal “front line” protester, complete with hard hat, gas mask, and protective goggles.

"In each store I visited, the only Uighur-language book was a copy of Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China."

A chilling account of China’s war on Uighur culture by @cdcshepherd https://t.co/sGKvawUQfS
— Nectar Gan (@Nectar_Gan) September 12, 2019

China, US, Hong Kong https://t.co/dk2RGjqxW3 @JAustinLowe @PeterMartin_PCM @BeijingPalmer @Nectar_Gan @osmastro @anniekowalewski
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) September 12, 2019

Fear and oppression in Xinjiang: China’s war on Uighur culture Beijing’s crackdown on minorities reflects a broader push towards a single ‘state-race’ ...... a former classmate had reported Yarmuhemmed’s family as being overly religious, resulting in a police search of the family home. Earlier that year, the authorities had ramped up scrutiny of all Muslim groups in the region, encouraging individuals to report their neighbours if they behaved “suspiciously” — which could mean anything from failing to socialise to fundraising for a local mosque........ Yarmuhemmed, 28, was arrested, tried and jailed for 10 years. Asqar never found out what he’d been charged with....... What happened to the Yarmuhemmeds — police searches, sudden detentions, the separation of families — has been repeated across hundreds of thousands of households in Xinjiang in the past few years, as China’s Communist party has placed the entire region in lockdown....... The Uighurs, who are mostly Muslim, make up nearly half of Xinjiang’s 24 million population. Scholars estimate that about 1.5 million Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui and other mostly Muslim minorities have been interned in camps that the government describes as aiming to “transform through education”, while hundreds of thousands more have been arrested and jailed. ........ During the crackdown, it has become almost impossible for Uighurs to leave Xinjiang to study or live abroad, due to a rigorous process of checks by the police before they can be granted a passport........ Testimony from former internees and government procurement documents suggests that camps such as the one Behram is being held in are run like prisons. Beatings, solitary confinement and other harsh punishments are meted out if internees do not follow orders........ Former detainees have described how the facilities run ideological indoctrination courses, where they must learn Mandarin Chinese, recite laws banning unapproved religious practice and sing songs praising the Chinese Communist party. ........ the Communist party’s attempts to assimilate Uighurs into Han Chinese cultural traditions. ...... Those on the list alongside Husenjan make up the backbone of Uighur intellectual life: doctors, computer scientists, musicians, anthropologists and authors. ....... Many are moderate and non-religious. ....... “cultural genocide”, a term usually defined as the forced assimilation of an indigenous group with the aim of eliminating its cultural distinctness. ....... The Alaska-sized region known today as Xinjiang has historically been home to a multitude of ethnic groups, many of them closer culturally to Central Asia than to eastern China, from skiing hunter tribes in its mountainous north to the desert traders of the ancient Silk Road in its south....... China’s Qing dynasty claimed the region as its “new frontier” — the literal translation of Xinjiang — in the 18th century, following a series of bloody military campaigns that wiped out the local Tibetan Mongal Dzungar rulers....... Xinjiang is central to President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road plan to build a network of roads, railways and ports to bolster trade between China and Eurasia. ...... Today, Xinjiang is the front line of China’s experiments to build an all-encompassing surveillance state, powered by both technology and a rapid increase of police boots on the ground. On a recent trip to the region, I was trailed continuously by state-security agents, who stopped and questioned each person I spoke to, even shopkeepers and waiters........ Every time I took a taxi, the driver would receive a call from local police, usually within 10 minutes. Once, a talkative Han Chinese driver answered the call on loudspeaker. After being told that the caller was from the ministry of public security, the driver immediately replied: “Where would you like me to take him?” ....... It is almost as hard to find out about missing persons from within Xinjiang as it is from outside. ....... When Kamaltürk Yalqun, a Uighur who lives in exile in Philadelphia, read about the film on the Radio Free Asia website, it confirmed his worst fears about the fate of his father, Yalqun Rozi. A prominent Uighur intellectual, Rozi had been an editor for the official Xinjiang Education Publishing House and one of the main editors for the textbooks. ....... “Schools are the principal front in an ideological struggle against separatism that is long, recurring, intense and at times extremely fierce; it is a conflict without smoke.” ...... For more than a decade, the textbooks were used, without major incident, in schools across Xinjiang. Then, in 2014, the authorities’ attitude suddenly shifted. ........ Since it was founded, China’s Communist party has swung between support for and repression of minority groups....... In its early years, the party cast itself as an active defender of ethnic-minority rights; its 1931 constitution recognised self-determination and “complete separation from China” for each minority, should they want it. ....... Under Xi, however, that discussion has largely disappeared. It has been replaced with a trend towards minority assimilation, often by force, in line with Xi’s vision of a unified Chinese nation....... “After 2009, there is a growing chorus of scholars and officials who say China is in danger of losing its grip over Tibet and Xinjiang and needs a radical reset of its ethnic policies,” says Leibold of La Trobe University. Among the loudest voices calling for a “new generation” of ethnic policies was Hu Lianhe. ...... Alongside a professor from Tsinghua University called Hu Angang — the two are not related — Hu Lianhe suggested that attempts to promote multi-ethnic states elsewhere in the world had failed and China should push different ethnicities to “blend together” into a single “state-race”. ....... That year, Xi formally launched the “people’s war on terror” and vowed to strike hard against the “three evil forces of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism” in Xinjiang. ..... a system of “grid” policing developed during his tenure in Tibet, hired thousands of additional officers and rapidly expanded the size and number of “transformation-through-education” camps in the region. ....... Of the more than 300 names on his list, about a third relate to the Uighur-language textbooks. Aside from Rozi, there is Satar Sawut, the former director of Xinjiang Education Supervision Bureau, and former Xinjiang University president Tashpolat Teyip, alongside dozens of other writers, editors and illustrators....... officials, who were starting to view the Uighur language as a serious threat. “Language is the main difference between Han and Uighurs. ...... a professor at the official Xinjiang Communist party school wrote an article that described the Uighur mother tongue movement as “the fourth evil force”, alongside those of “separatism, religious extremism and terrorism”....... Every year, tens of thousands of Uighur and other minority students are offered fully funded places at boarding schools in majority Han areas of inland China. ........ The mass internment programme has left many minority children without their parents; the authorities have built a network of de facto orphanages and boarding schools that can hothouse the children in Han Chinese environments....... since 2017, the Chinese state had created “a vast and multi-layered care system that enables it to provide full-time or near full-time care” for children from as young as one or two years of age....... The facilities were likely to be part of “a deliberate strategy and crucial element in the state’s systematic campaign of social re-engineering and cultural genocide in Xinjiang”, Zenz wrote. ..... Even the language used by Chinese authorities has shifted. The term “Han language”, once the most common way of describing Mandarin Chinese, has been replaced by “national language”. ...... In each store I visited, the only Uighur-language book was a copy of Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China.

China, US, Hong Kong, Xinjiang https://t.co/dk2RGjqxW3 @cdcshepherd @FTMag @suelinwong @teamlipei @YuanfenYang
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) September 12, 2019

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