The catastrophic police data leak has co • Table.Briefings

The Shanghai police have apparently been incredibly careless with citizens’ data. China’s government now wants to enforce existing laws more strictly. After all, the incident shows: The authorities may be collecting data like crazy, but in some cases, they are astonishingly careless.

Perfect surveillance meets less-than-perfectionist users: The Shanghai police apparently left a database of citizen information lying around unprotected on a publicly accessible server for months. This was reported by CNN and the Wall Street Journal. The hackers, who were able to obtain the addresses and telephone and ID numbers of nearly a billion people, did not have to do much to get their hands on the treasure trove of data. Now they are offering it on the free market for 23 Bitcoin (China.Table reported).

The catastrophic police data leak has consequences

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