BEIJING—Chinese police have begun leveraging the powers of the country’s surveillance state to go after demonstrators who participated in rare public displays of defiance over the government’s stringent Covid control policies.

Wang Shengsheng, a lawyer providing legal support to more than 20 protesters from Beijing, Shanghai and other cities, said at least 15 people or their families and friends reached out to her for help after being contacted by local police. She said she suspected that police had used data from mobile phones, including apps used to monitor Covid exposure, to track the movements of people involved in protests. Police were also scanning social-media accounts to investigate protesters, she said.

A university student in Beijing who participated in Sunday’s protest in the city said his school had been contacted by police. The school told him police had used mobile phone data to track his movements to the vicinity of the protests. He said he had been asked to write a declaration explaining why he was present in the area at the time.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China has expanded its ability to track the movements and activities of its citizens. While this didn’t stop the protests from breaking out, China’s security apparatus has begun to lean on it to prevent them from spreading. Besides hundreds of millions of cameras—some equipped with facial recognition software—that line city streets, police also can access detailed mobile phone and social-media data that shows the locations of people at a given time. The government has enhanced these capabilities over the past two years as part of contact-tracing efforts to control the spread of the virus.

The efforts to track down protesters came as Chinese health officials responded to the public anger over the Covid policies and appeared to recalibrate their message on the danger posed by the virus.

On Tuesday, the National Health Commission urged local government officials to avoid unnecessary and lengthy lockdowns. Health officials said the Omicron variant led to less severe Covid cases than previous variants, in contrast with their previous remarks that had stressed the contagiousness of Omicron.

The message echoed a similar shift from Chinese state media. On Tuesday, the Beijing News, a Communist Party-run newspaper, published interviews with about half a dozen recovered patients who said their symptoms were mild and they had no long-term effects. Previous coverage highlighted the dangers of the virus.

On Tuesday, health officials vowed to continue observing the virus and said they would adjust their policies accordingly. They also said they would step up efforts to vaccinate people aged 80 and older. About 66% of that age group has been fully vaccinated so far, they said.

Chinese state media has continued to defend the country’s zero-Covid policies, saying it has saved lives. On Tuesday, a commentary in the People’s Daily blamed more than half a dozen private Covid-testing businesses for unnecessary lockdowns, accusing them of producing false-positive results.

“As a result, tens of thousands of innocent people were silenced and controlled, their lives and work severely damaged,” the commentary said.

In recent days, Covid cases in China have exceeded the previous peak hit in April during a Shanghai lockdown. The country reported more than 37,000 new Covid cases on Monday, health officials said.

On Monday, the U.S. Embassy issued a notice warning of expanded Covid control measures in China as outbreaks grew.

“We encourage all U.S. citizens to keep a 14-day supply of medications, bottled water, and food for yourself and any members of your household,” it said.

The protests appeared over the weekend in several of China’s biggest cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, as three-years of accumulated frustration over the country’s zero-tolerance policies boiled over into open defiance. Some protesters chanted calls for political change, while others held blank sheets of white paper to express opposition to government censorship.

The protests followed a deadly fire on Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of the western region of Xinjiang. Some residents suggested that pandemic restrictions contributed to delays in putting out a fire that killed 10 people.

On Monday night, plastic barriers were seen being set up in an area in central Shanghai where hundreds of people took to the streets. Some chanted slogans demanding that Mr. Xi step down.

The White House voiced careful support for the protesters on Monday, saying people around the world should have the right to protest peacefully, while some members of Congress took a more strident tone.

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or read here

https://archive.ph/vQyF5

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Btw. you gotta be pretty dumb to go to protest (in China) with phone (not in airplane mode), since they can triangulate your location within city even without SIM card or any data connection.