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Among others, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and members of the British royal family are included in the database, The Telegraph reports. The database consists of information on the home address and date of birth, as well as photographs. Some of the information comes from open sources, such as Facebook accounts, but some of the information should consist of banking information, job applications, and psychological profiles.
Zhenhua Data, the company behind the database, describes itself as a company providing services for military and propaganda purposes with, among other things, the Chinese intelligence service as a client.
The database was originally leaked to American economics professor Chris Balding, who previously worked in China, and was shared with various media outlets in various countries. With the help of the cybersecurity company Internet 2.0, they have since managed to recreate 250,000 of the total 2.4 million entries in the database.
When The Telegraph contacted Zhenhua Data for comment, their website should have been taken down. A Chinese government spokesman denies using the database.
“China has not asked and will not ask companies or individuals to collect data or information stored in other countries through back doors or in violation of local laws,” the spokesman said.
Chris Balding writes on his blog that the leaked database is evidence of activities that China was thought to have engaged in, but previously had no evidence of.
“We are only facing the first step in understanding how much China is investing in intelligence and defense work,” he writes, among other things.
