The Fort Worth Press - Athlete surveillance warnings cloud China's Winter Olympics

USD -
AED 3.672974
AFN 68.425216
ALL 93.007834
AMD 390.01331
ANG 1.81621
AOA 911.999957
ARS 998.249996
AUD 1.54345
AWG 1.8
AZN 1.699887
BAM 1.852776
BBD 2.034663
BDT 120.423833
BGN 1.85313
BHD 0.376872
BIF 2975.829027
BMD 1
BND 1.346811
BOB 6.963779
BRL 5.806301
BSD 1.007759
BTN 84.987093
BWP 13.673805
BYN 3.297919
BYR 19600
BZD 2.031252
CAD 1.40043
CDF 2864.99997
CHF 0.887045
CLF 0.035513
CLP 979.910444
CNY 7.243099
CNH 7.255902
COP 4479
CRC 514.586422
CUC 1
CUP 26.5
CVE 104.456686
CZK 23.962998
DJF 179.450744
DKK 7.067675
DOP 60.695052
DZD 134.182994
EGP 49.321298
ERN 15
ETB 122.993165
EUR 0.94762
FJD 2.27485
FKP 0.788387
GBP 0.78809
GEL 2.730243
GGP 0.788387
GHS 16.275027
GIP 0.788387
GMD 70.999767
GNF 8626.906515
GTQ 7.732614
GYD 209.363849
HKD 7.78093
HNL 25.442281
HRK 7.133336
HTG 132.50221
HUF 386.750254
IDR 15875.4431
ILS 3.748965
IMP 0.788387
INR 84.433209
IQD 1320.093319
IRR 42092.498493
ISK 139.630035
JEP 0.788387
JMD 159.538871
JOD 0.709102
JPY 155.900501
KES 129.500052
KGS 86.201845
KHR 4082.940274
KMF 466.349913
KPW 900.000286
KRW 1408.14273
KWD 0.307714
KYD 0.833937
KZT 496.700918
LAK 22131.335237
LBP 89600.701953
LKR 294.541861
LRD 189.957415
LSL 18.103174
LTL 2.95274
LVL 0.60489
LYD 4.882485
MAD 10.020131
MDL 18.159255
MGA 4702.502532
MKD 58.284107
MMK 2097.999867
MNT 3397.99984
MOP 8.017648
MRU 40.117279
MUR 46.889905
MVR 15.449622
MWK 1747.434509
MXN 20.571925
MYR 4.482016
MZN 63.899993
NAD 18.103174
NGN 1684.119587
NIO 37.087736
NOK 11.152585
NPR 135.978578
NZD 1.70394
OMR 0.385031
PAB 1
PEN 3.819421
PGK 4.022654
PHP 58.849994
PKR 278.051027
PLN 4.116289
PYG 7864.722013
QAR 3.674102
RON 4.717298
RSD 110.890999
RUB 98.500922
RWF 1383.186748
SAR 3.757416
SBD 8.383555
SCR 13.620275
SDG 601.497717
SEK 10.996295
SGD 1.345889
SHP 0.788387
SLE 22.814988
SLL 20969.502481
SOS 575.878195
SRD 35.279754
STD 20697.981008
SVC 8.756103
SYP 2512.530181
SZL 18.108875
THB 35.04298
TJS 10.662352
TMT 3.51
TND 3.147935
TOP 2.38999
TRY 34.356195
TTD 6.800372
TWD 32.57475
TZS 2680.545109
UAH 41.343768
UGX 3672.512403
UYU 42.486895
UZS 12811.433733
VES 44.996696
VND 25374.272123
VUV 118.722041
WST 2.798776
XAF 621.79325
XAG 0.033135
XAU 0.00039
XCD 2.70255
XDR 0.753908
XOF 621.79325
XPF 113.11667
YER 249.774976
ZAR 18.27157
ZMK 9001.193302
ZMW 27.374927
ZWL 321.999592
  • CMSD

    -0.0200

    24.73

    -0.08%

  • CMSC

    0.0700

    24.61

    +0.28%

  • SCS

    -0.3000

    13.37

    -2.24%

  • NGG

    -0.7800

    62.12

    -1.26%

  • BCC

    1.4200

    142.55

    +1%

  • BTI

    0.1800

    35.42

    +0.51%

  • BP

    0.4100

    28.57

    +1.44%

  • AZN

    0.1000

    65.29

    +0.15%

  • JRI

    0.0200

    13.24

    +0.15%

  • GSK

    -0.4100

    35.11

    -1.17%

  • RIO

    -0.5800

    60.62

    -0.96%

  • RBGPF

    59.2500

    59.25

    +100%

  • RYCEF

    -0.0400

    7.07

    -0.57%

  • VOD

    0.2800

    8.75

    +3.2%

  • BCE

    -0.4800

    27.21

    -1.76%

  • RELX

    -0.4700

    46.12

    -1.02%

Athlete surveillance warnings cloud China's Winter Olympics
Athlete surveillance warnings cloud China's Winter Olympics

Athlete surveillance warnings cloud China's Winter Olympics

A growing number of Western nations and cybersecurity groups have issued digital surveillance warnings for next month's Winter Olympics in Beijing, with some advising foreign athletes to leave personal phones and laptops at home.

Text size:

China hopes to pull off a successful, coronavirus-free Games that will burnish its international reputation.

But the run-up has been fraught with political controversies including diplomatic boycotts over Beijing's rights record and worries about the safety of tennis star Peng Shuai, who was not seen for weeks after accusing a former Communist Party leader of sexual assault.

Now concerns are focusing on whether the tens of thousands of foreign athletes, dignitaries and media workers will be safe from China's vast array of surveillance tools.

Everyone taking part in the Games will operate in a bubble that separates them from the rest of the population, to reduce the chances of the coronavirus spreading into China, which sticks to a strict zero-Covid policy.

Earlier this week, researchers at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab said a virus-monitoring app all attendees must use was found to have a "simple but devastating" encryption flaw that could allow personal data including health information and voice messages to leak.

Citizen Lab said it notified Beijing organisers of the issues in early December, but received no reply.

"China has a history of undermining encryption technology to perform political censorship and surveillance," researcher Jeffrey Knockel wrote.

"As such, it is reasonable to ask whether the encryption in this app was intentionally sabotaged for surveillance purposes or whether the defect was born of developer negligence."

Canberra-based cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 also warned in a recent report that official Games software -- including a VPN and an anti-virus product -- from two of the event's Chinese tech sponsors could potentially collect troves of user data without their knowledge.

- Burner phones -

The Beijing Winter Olympic Organising Committee told AFP Thursday that any security issues had been "fixed", and they had not been aware of Citizen Lab's earlier request.

"The security loopholes have already been fixed. If they existed in earlier versions, they have been fixed in the latest version," said Yu Hong, head of tech at the committee.

The International Olympic Committee has also dismissed the Citizen Lab claims, citing assessments from two unnamed cybersecurity organisations which "confirmed that there are no critical vulnerabilities".

But such assurances have done little to mollify some Western teams.

National Olympic associations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia have advised athletes to leave their personal devices at home and use temporary burner phones if possible while in China for the Games.

"We've reminded all Team Canada members that the Olympic Games present a unique opportunity for cybercrime," the Canadian Olympic Committee said in a statement, adding it warned athletes to be "extra diligent".

Dutch and Belgian media reported last week that their athletes had been given similar advice. Australia will provide its own Wi-Fi for athletes in designated areas, Bloomberg reported.

Some of these countries have joined a growing diplomatic boycott of the Games that has incensed China. Other European nations are unruffled. The Spanish and Italian Olympic committees told AFP they had given no specific advice to athletes on cybersecurity.

- 'Uncensored does not mean unmonitored' -

China maintains the world's most sophisticated digital tools to monitor and censor the internet for its citizens, keeping the online world behind a "Great Firewall" and blocking major Western platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

It has previously provided uncensored internet access to guests at international events on Chinese soil.

The IOC has said China will give athletes and accredited foreign journalists uncensored internet access through Wi-Fi networks and official SIM cards.

State-owned China Unicom will provide 5G data SIM cards to incoming foreign journalists, according to an article on the news site of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

But analysts fear such Wi-Fi networks could still pose potential cybersecurity threats to users, such as surveillance and personal data theft.

It is common practice for foreign diplomats to leave behind personal phones when visiting China on work trips for the same reasons.

"It would be a good assumption that connecting to public Wi-Fi in the bubble is not safe -- that the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security could have access to the data," said Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Robert Potter, co-founder of Internet 2.0, agreed that caution was reasonable, saying that "the surveillance state does not have an exception clause for athletes".

"Uncensored does not mean unmonitored," he told AFP. "I don't know of anyone who has entered China who has not been subject to some level of electronic surveillance."

J.M.Ellis--TFWP