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China’s Surveillance State Is Selling Citizen Data as a Side Hustle
Chinese black market operators are openly recruiting government agency insiders, paying them for access to surveillance data and then reselling it online—no questions asked.
At the Cyberwarcon security conference in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday, researchers from the cybersecurity firm SpyCloud plan to present their findings from monitoring a collection of black market services that offer cheap and easy searches of Chinese citizens' data. The result is an ecosystem that operates in full public view where, for as little as a few dollars worth of cryptocurrency, anyone can query phone numbers, banking details, hotel and flight records, or even location data on target individuals. But they also appear to offer information from insiders at tech and telecom firms, banks, and China's state surveillance agencies, and even openly post ads seeking to recruit staffers of those organizations looking for an extra source of income.
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