Police database breach a ‘big black eye’ for Chinese security systems

Shanghai [China], July 9 (ANI): There is rising outrage amongst Chinese citizens with the surfacing of numerous incidents of personal data breaches parked on Chinese security systems, with the latest being a breach on Shanghai police database.

As per New York Times, the Shanghai police database with a vast trove of personal data that was seized by a hacker was left unsecured for months, security researchers said and turned out to be the largest known breach of Chinese government computer systems.

The leak came to light after an anonymous user posted in an online forum offering to sell personal information of as many as one billion Chinese citizens, exposing the privacy risks of the Chinese government’s vast surveillance.

The communist party collect a huge amount of data on citizens by tracking their movements and recording their DNA and other biological markers, New York Times reported, adding that it has been subjected to severe leaks due to parking it on unprotected servers.

Claiming to have information on 90 million citizens, another anonymous user posted on social media offering to sell a separate police database from the central Chinese province of Henan.

Over recent years, Chinese citizens have expressed growing demands for personal privacy and data protection from companies as the online security breaches fueled public resistance to the collection of private data by the government.

However, the news about the leak was swiftly censored and removed from the Chinese internet and social media platforms, a sign that the government understood the explosive nature of the apparent breach.

As of Thursday, Hashtags such as “Shanghai data leak,” “data leak of one billion citizens” and “data leak” remained blocked on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging service as of Thursday, The New York Times reported, citing local media sources.

“It’s left a big black eye for the Chinese public security world, and by extension the Chinese government,” said Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China at Albright Stonebridge Group, a strategy firm. on China’s policies on surveillance of its masses.

“It’s not surprising they’ve gone into full censorship mode given how sensitive this issue is for the…