Updated: September 14, 2020 1:42:04 am
Not only influential individuals in the political and official establishment, the Indians who are monitored cross disciplines. They include bureaucrats in key positions; judges; scientists and academics; journalists; actors and athletes; religious figures and activists.
Calling itself a pioneer in the use of big data for “hybrid warfare” and the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” a Shenzhen-based tech company with ties to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party, is monitoring more than 10,000 Indian individuals and organizations in its global database of “foreign targets”, revealed an investigation by The Indian Express.
The range of targets in India identified and monitored in real time by Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co. Limited is wide, both in breadth and depth.
Read | On the list: Chief of Defense Staff; military, superior brass science
From President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Acting President of Congress Sonia Gandhi and their families; Chief Ministers Mamata Banerjee, Ashok Gehlot and Amarinder Singh to Uddhav Thackeray, Naveen Patnaik and Shivraj Singh Chouhan; Cabinet Ministers Rajnath Singh and Ravi Shankar Prasad to Nirmala Sitharaman, Smriti Irani and Piyush Goyal; The Chief of Defense Staff, Bipin Singh Rawat, to at least 15 former chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, Sharad Bobde, and Brother Justice AM Khanwilkar, of Lokpal Justice PC Ghose, and Comptroller and Auditor General GC Murmu; Startup tech entrepreneurs like Nipun Mehra, founder of Bharat Pe (an Indian payment app), and Ajay Trehan of AuthBridge, an authentication technology company, to leading industrialists Ratan Tata and Gautam Adani.
Not just influential individuals in the political and official establishment, the Indians being monitored cross disciplines. They include bureaucrats in key positions; judges; scientists and academics; journalists; actors and athletes; religious figures and activists. And even hundreds accused of financial crimes, corruption, terrorism and smuggling of narcotics, gold, weapons or wildlife.
This becomes important when an increasingly assertive China is caught in a simmering showdown with India along the Royal Line of Control in Ladakh and is pressing against many of its neighbors in the region and beyond. In fact, Zhenhua claims that it works with Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies.
Explained: Hybrid Warfare: What Data They Collect, Why Concern
For two months, The Indian Express, using big data tools, investigated the metadata of Zhenhua’s operations to extract Indian entities from the massive dump of log files that made up what the company called the Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB). This database uses advanced language, orientation and classification tools. included hundreds of entries without explicit markers.
It has entries from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates, it was obtained through a network of researchers from a source connected to the company based in the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province, southeast China.
Citing “risk and safety,” the source declined to be named.
Working through a professor in Vietnam, Christopher Balding, who has taught in Shenzhen, the source shared data with new organizations including The Indian Express, The Australian Financial Review, Il Foglio of Italy and The Daily Telegraph, London.
Key to the monitoring process is Zhenhua Data’s stated goal of mining data to drive what it calls “hybrid warfare” – using non-military tools to achieve dominance or to harm, subvert or influence. These tools include, in their own words, “information contamination, perception management, and propaganda.”
Records show that Zhenhua registered as a company in April 2018 and established 20 processing centers in countries and regions. It counts the Chinese government and army among its clients.
A detailed questionnaire sent to the email identifiers mentioned on the company’s website http://www.china-revival.com on September 1 did not get any response. In fact, the company removed its website on September 9 and it is no longer accessible.
When a correspondent visited Zhenhua Data’s headquarters in Shenzhen and submitted a list of questions that included those from The Indian Express, a company staff member, who declined to offer his name, said: “Sorry, these questions touch our trade secrets. It is not convenient to reveal “.
But responding to inquiries from The Indian Express, a source at the Chinese Embassy in Delhi said: “China has not asked and will not ask companies or individuals to collect or provide data, information and intelligence stored in the territories of other countries to the Chinese government by installing “Back Doors” or violating local laws. “
However, the source did not answer specific questions whether the Chinese government and the military were customers of Zhenhua Data, as the company claims, or for what purpose the Chinese government used OKIDB data, if it did.
“What I would like to point out is that the Chinese government has been asking Chinese companies to strictly comply with local laws and regulations when doing business abroad; this position is not going to change ”, said the source of the Embassy.
Extracting information from the web and social media platforms, tracking research work, articles, patents, recruitment positions, Zhenhua monitoring services map what it calls people information and relationship mining: networks between individuals, institutions and organizations, and changes in their leadership positions based on information from multiple sources.
It’s no wonder then that OKIDB also builds family trees.
The Indian Express the investigation has shown that OKIDB tracks the relatives of, among others, Prime Minister Modi (wife Jashodaben); President Kovind (wife Savita Kovind); former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (wife Gursharan Kaur and daughters Upinder, Daman, Amrit); Sonia Gandhi (husband, the late Rajiv, son Rahul Gandhi, daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra); Smriti Irani (husband Zubin Irani); Harsimrat Kaur (husband Sukhbir Singh Badal, brother Bikram Singh Majithia and father Satyajit Singh Majithia); Akhilesh Yadav (father Mulayam, wife Dimple, father-in-law RC Rawat, uncles Shivpal Singh and Ram Gopal).
On Zhenhua’s list of those being monitored are former chief ministers Raman Singh, Ashok Chavan and Siddaramaiah; political party leaders, the late M Karunanidhi of DMK, the late Kanshi Ram of the Bahujan Samaj Party and Lalu Prasad Yadav of RJD. The database has a strategic collection of more than 250 Indian bureaucrats and diplomats, including Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla; Amitabh Kant, CEO of Niti Aayog; up to 23 former and current chief clerks and more than a dozen former and current state police chiefs.
Those of the media mentioned on the list include: N Ravi, who was named president of The Hindu Group last week; Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary; India Today Group Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai; former media adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office Sanjaya Baru; and The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Raj Kamal Jha.
The code names of sports, culture and religion are also listed. Former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, film director Shyam Benegal, classical dancer Sonal Mansingh, former Akal Takht Jathedar Gurbachan Singh, various bishops and archbishops of churches, the self-styled god-woman Radhe Maa (Sukhwinder Kaur); Bibi Jagir Kaur, the first woman to be elected as the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee for the second time, and Hardev Singh of the Nirankari Mission, are being monitored.
“Each country does this in one way or another, that is the job of foreign intelligence. But using the science and technology of big data, Beijing has clearly taken it to the next level, ”said Robert Potter, a Canberra-based cybersecurity, technology and data expert who worked with the source to verify electronic background. of the Zhenhua. data set.
“Just looking at the variety of people they get information about shows that they take the strategic value of hybrid warfare very seriously. These are their information assets and continuously tracking them, their work, their families, their movements, their leadership roles, their organizations are invaluable data that can be leveraged in countless ways, “said Potter.
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