A cyclist rides past a signage displayed outside Oracleâs building at Zhongguancun Software Park on Aug. 30, 2020, in Beijing.Photo: VCG via Getty ImagesA cyclist rides past a signage displayed outside Oracleâs building at Zhongguancun Software Park on Aug. 30, 2020, in Beijing.Photo: VCG via Getty Images
How a Chinese Surveillance Broker Became Oracleâs âPartner of the Yearâ
A network of local resellers helps funnel Oracle technology to the police and military in China.
April 22 2021, 7:00Â a.m.
A cyclist rides past a signage displayed outside Oracleâs building at Zhongguancun Software Park on Aug. 30, 2020, in Beijing.Photo: VCG via Getty ImagesA cyclist rides past a signage displayed outside Oracleâs building at Zhongguancun Software Park on Aug. 30, 2020, in Beijing.Photo: VCG via Getty Images
Fri, Feb 26th 2021 1:37pm
Mike Masnick
As you ll recall, last summer there was a whole performative nonsense thing with then President Trump declaring TikTok to be a national security threat (just shortly after some kids on TikTok made him look silly by reserving a million tickets to a Trump rally they never intended to attend). Trump and his cronies insisted that TikTok owner ByteDance had to sell the US operations of TikTok to an American firm. The whole rationale about this was the claim unsupported by any direct evidence that TikTok was a privacy risk, because it was owned by a firm based in Beijing, and that firm likely had connections to the Chinese government (as do basically all large Chinese firms). But how was that privacy risk any worse than pretty much any other company? No one ever seemed to be able to say.
By Mara Hvistendahl
The Intercept, February 22, 2020 Oracle documents tout how its software can be used to integrate social media activity with police data,
including in Chinam, February 22, 2021
HOW ORACLE SELLS REPRESSION IN CHINA
In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it’s been marketing its own software for their surveillance work.
POLICE IN CHINA’S Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records, travel information, vehicle registrations, social media, and surveillance camera footage. To make sense of it all, they needed sophisticated analytic software. Enter
A Chinese woman uses her phone next to a mobile police command bus in Beijing on May 4, 2020. Photo: Stephen Shaver/UPI/AlamyA Chinese woman uses her phone next to a mobile police command bus in Beijing on May 4, 2020. Photo: Stephen Shaver/UPI/Alamy
How Oracle Sells Repression in China
In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it’s been marketing its own software for their surveillance work.
February 18 2021, 11:20 a.m.
A Chinese woman uses her phone next to a mobile police command bus in Beijing on May 4, 2020. Photo: Stephen Shaver/UPI/AlamyA Chinese woman uses her phone next to a mobile police command bus in Beijing on May 4, 2020. Photo: Stephen Shaver/UPI/Alamy