WeChat WeChat is now emerging as surveillance tool in China
Beijing: China's WeChat app has turned out as one of the most powerful tools in Beijing for monitoring the public, censoring speech and punishing people who voice discontent with the government, media reports said.
Authorities are increasingly using the app from Tencent Holdings Ltd. to justify arrests or issue threats, say dissidents, consumers and security researchers, reported The Wall Street Journal.
Wang Shengsheng, a labor and women’s rights lawyer, told the newspaper that authorities were monitoring her WeChat and text messages earlier this year so they could gather evidence to thwart her legal career.
Local public security and party discipline officials in her hometown also tracked down her father as part of their efforts to tarnish her reputation, she told the newspaper.
“People always say that all of your communications on WeChat are out in the open. I never fully grasped what that meant until the recent incident,” she said. “Now I’m terrified.”
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