Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP)
The Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) is a predictive policing system that plays a key role in mass surveillance and mass detention by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang. Through the use of widespread data collection, the IJOP system uses artificial intelligence to identify and flag people for questioning and potential detention. Police and other authorities are able to use a mobile app to run background checks and communicate with the IJOP system in real time.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW):
“The IJOP platform tracks everyone in Xinjiang. It monitors people’s movements by tracing their phones, vehicles, and ID cards. It keeps track of people’s use of electricity and gas stations. […] People’s freedom of movement is restricted to varying degrees depending on the level of threat authorities perceive they pose, determined by factors programmed into the system.”
“Data sources include Xinjiang’s countless checkpoints, closed-circuit cameras with facial recognition, spyware that the police require some Uyghurs to install in their phones, “Wi-Fi sniffers” that collect identifying information of smartphones and computers, and even package deliveries.”
The four China Cables bulletins obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and published in November 2019 focus on the details of the IJOP system’s implementation.
“Bulletin No. 14,” for instance, provides instruction on how to conduct mass investigations and detentions after the IJOP system has generated a lengthy list of suspects. It notes that in a seven-day period in June 2017, security officials rounded up 15,683 Xinjiang residents flagged by the IJOP system and placed them in internment camps (in addition to 706 formally arrested).
Key Reading:
The China Cables (ICIJ, November 2019)
The China Cables include a classified list of guidelines, personally approved by the region’s top security chief, that effectively serves as a manual for operating the camps, as well as previously undisclosed intelligence briefings that reveal, in the government’s own words, how Chinese police are guided by a massive data collection and analysis system that uses artificial intelligence to select entire categories of Xinjiang residents for detention.
China’s Algorithms of Repression: Reverse Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App (HRW, May 2019)
This report provides a detailed description and analysis of a mobile app that police and other officials use to communicate with the IJOP system By “reverse engineering” this mobile app, we now know specifically the kinds of behaviours and people this mass surveillance system targets.
How Mass Surveillance Works in Xinjiang: ‘Reverse Engineering’ Police App Reveals Profiling, Monitoring Strategies (HRW, May 2019)
Chinese authorities are using a mobile app to carry out illegal mass surveillance and arbitrary detention of Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today, which presents new evidence about the surveillance state in Xinjiang, where the government has subjected 13 million Turkic Muslims to heightened repression as part of its “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism.”
Big Data Fuels Crackdown in Minority Region: Predictive Policing Program Flags Individuals for Investigations, Detentions (HRW, February 2018)
Chinese authorities are building and deploying a predictive policing program based on big data analysis in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said today. The program aggregates data about people – often without their knowledge – and flags those it deems potentially threatening to officials.