Lin Min

    LAST October, Yasir Afifi, a college university in San Jose, California, discovered a GPS tracking device under his car.

    Now Afifi’s lawyers say they are filing a lawsuit against the FBI hoping for a court decision ruling that any use of tracking devices without a warrant is unconstitutional.

    Back home, Beijing’s plan to track the movements of 17 million mobile phone users using GPS technology looks like putting a GPS tracking device on every person, without asking for their consent.

    Li Guoguang, an official with the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, which worked on the project with China Mobile, told the media last week that the project would be used only to ease traffic jams. The project, called Information Platform of Real-time Citizen Movement, aims to watch over 17 million people in the Chinese capital 24 hours a day.

    This is chilling. Wherever you are — whether in the bathroom or in a restaurant with your girlfriend or boyfriend — your whereabouts are being recorded and those with access to the “platform” will know. If this project is implemented, citizens will find their privacy in peril. They are being watched so long as they carry their mobiles unless they take out the battery.

    The plan shows the commission’s brazen disregard for citizen rights. No public hearing. No plan to seek mobile users’ consent before they are included in the “platform.” Only a meaningless pledge from Li: Sensitive information, such as who was where and in which direction they were heading, would be kept within the government.

    In fact, the misuse of private information, quite often in the hands of government agencies, has been rampant. Vehicle registration information has been used by criminals to duplicate plates. Traffic surveillance cameras were also used to satisfy some voyeurs. In 2008, two government employees were sacked after they were found to have used a street surveillance camera to peep into the bathrooms and bedrooms of private residences near the Yayuan Flyover in Luohu, Shenzhen.

    The Beijing commission should also seriously consider whether such a “platform” to track citizens’ movements would be legal before they proceed with the project.

    Although U.S. judges have disagreed over whether search warrants should be required for GPS tracking, the federal appeals court in the Washington circuit where Afifi’s case was filed ruled in August that the collection of GPS data amounts to a government “search” that required a warrant.

    The tracking of a person’s movement through his mobile phone signals amounts to placing a GPS tracking device on his wrist or leg.

    Although the Chinese Constitution does not mention privacy, it says a citizen’s dignity should not be violated, and that any organization or individual should not infringe citizens’ communication freedom and confidentiality.

    The Ministry of Information Technology had to give up its plan in 2009 to require all computers to have the Green Dam pornography-filtering software installed in the factory, following outcries over privacy concerns. Beijing’s latest Big Brother attempt shows no lesson has been learned from the Green Dam saga. Big Brother needs to be watched if citizens are to protect their privacy.

    (The author is editor of the Shenzhen Daily News Desk.)