The software engineer Liu Dadong, who used to live a peaceful life in China, fled to the United States in February 2019 as a family member of “Taiwan independence.” He recently revealed to The Epoch Times that while working as a software engineer in China, he participated in a bidding project for the Chinese Communist Party’s navy soldier monitoring system.
In 2017, Liu Dadong joined an information technology company in Beijing as a front-end developer. The company was located in Zhongguancun, Beijing’s high-tech center, but was not very large. He took over the job of a previous front-end programmer, mainly focusing on optimization to make the front-end program smoother and more natural, pleasing to the boss.
One day, Liu Dadong’s boss told him and his colleagues that they were preparing for a project for navy bidding. “Our company is too small, I feel we should be just accompanying the bid,” Liu Dadong said. It is common in China to accompany bids; the winning bid is typically predetermined, and the accompany bidders are well aware of it.
While developing the project, Liu Dadong was instructed by the boss to proceed as needed. “But based on what the boss requested to develop, you can tell it’s for monitoring,” he said.
He explained the bidding project process, “We first set up a central server, then require the navy units to forcefully install some apps on soldiers’ phones. Once installed, the app will take over the highest permission of the phone, accessing all the information inside.”
“As long as the soldier uses the phone, all their activities will be monitored,” he said. Every action on the phone can be tracked, including which apps are used, websites visited, calls made, keyboard input, searched terms, browsed images, location-tagged photos, searched keywords, sensitive words, and their frequency.
“Sensitive words are necessary,” he added, “I was asked to update the sensitive words after developing for some time, with a dedicated source for sensitive words data, which is updated by authorities.”
Liu Dadong mentioned that once the app collects phone information, it is sent to the server for storage. “The interface part I developed is specifically responsible for summarizing and analyzing the collected data. Whatever display the user needs, I provide that display.”
The product developed by Liu Dadong’s company had passed testing, and he described the testing scenario. “It involves taking a brand-new phone, downloading our app, and our server will gain access to all the phone’s data. Any behaviors of the phone user will be updated in real-time in the background.”
He specifically mentioned a test called “Location Monitoring.” “We set a central point, such as our company during the test, and if the phone goes beyond a certain range from the center, there will be an alert on the phone. We initially set the sensitivity to 100 meters; as soon as the phone goes out of the zone, the app will record the time and distance of leaving the monitoring area.”
“The person monitoring you won’t inform you about the central point design. Once you leave the camp area frequently, they will consider it as spying behavior.
Liu Dadong indicated that he could make the person aware or not. If they want to alert him, they can directly pop up a message on his phone saying he has left the safe area or free activity zone. Or they can choose not to inform him.
Liu Dadong mentioned that the core logic behind all IT project designs is universal. For example, if you need to edit a program for booking train tickets, the same program can be used for booking plane tickets. Similarly, phone monitoring is designed for the navy but could be applied to the army, schools, or companies.
Nowadays, surveillance can be implemented at various levels on all electronic products, but the most challenging and core aspect to prevent monitoring is at the chip level. “Because the chip is too small, digging out the Trojan horse program embedded in it is nearly impossible without the blueprint. This is why the CCP is striving to develop domestic chips.”
The Financial Times reported in March last year that the CCP issued new guidelines to gradually phase out Intel and AMD chips from government personal computers and servers.
According to Chinese media reports, by 2022, 31 provinces, 115 central and state organs, had replaced 5 to 6 million PCs and servers.
Liu Dadong mentioned that surveillance is highly related to hardware and operating systems. “This is the front line where the CCP strives for control of hardware and software.” Only the designers of software and hardware know the hidden backdoors, and though experts can find clues through dismantling and reviewing the source code, accurate identification is difficult.
“The CCP doesn’t dare to use foreign chips. If the U.S. or TSMC tampered with the chips, the CCP would have no means to detect it. Once using those chips, they would be vulnerable. While being silent for a long time, once activated, they could disable all chips remotely, or generate false data, catching you off guard during a conflict.”
Liu Dadong mentioned that the U.S. may not have backdoors in their chips, but the CCP remains skeptical. So in government agencies, they prefer inferior CCP-made chips. Similarly, with software, once a backdoor is installed, it’s challenging to detect unless you surpass it technologically.
He said, “The systems built by the CCP are different. For example, Huawei products are all made in China, and when both software and hardware are clean, they can seemingly provide authorization interfaces, pretending to respect your privacy, asking for permission to access your phone’s album or camera. In reality, they can bypass your choice and access without your consent.”
Liu Dadong mentioned that the CCP has always been interested in the personal information of American citizens to understand political leanings and dynamic thoughts.
“These things may sound conceptual, but in reality, algorithms are operating,” he stressed.
He noted that the CCP has established the Skynet Project and Bright Project, focusing on video surveillance and nationwide networking. The key lies in collecting the data of the population, cross-referencing with the government database through biometric and voice recognition, gait recognition, etc., to identify individuals. Chinese software can obtain phone permissions and, once obtained, through information aggregation, generate and recognize your behavioral patterns, directly using the user interface to quantify your political leanings.
He pointed out that the danger now lies in the fact that CCP’s surveillance technology is highly advanced. With enough data and algorithm adjustments, they can achieve a certain level of surveillance on Americans, similar to what they do domestically.
After obtaining personal data of Americans, the least damaging manipulation includes fraudulent calls, while advanced forms of surveillance might analyze investment preferences, political inclinations, and religious beliefs of specific populations. This data can be used to manipulate and incite targeted groups, crafting algorithms to influence the information they see.
“Especially in a free democratic society like the U.S., this kind of surveillance poses a significant threat. By having access to all voters’ data, they practically control the election outcome even before the voting begins.”
“Lies repeated a hundred times become the truth. For instance, a group supporting Trump can gradually change to support Hillary. If bombarded with negative messages about Trump and positive news about Hillary, their viewpoints can be altered,” he explained.
According to FBI data in 2022, the CCP stole more personal and company data from the U.S. than all other countries combined.
In June of this year, the U.S. House Select Committee on U.S.-China Strategic Competition expressed concerns about OnePlus phones potentially collecting and transferring customer data to other regions. The committee stated that the privacy of American users might be compromised by transferring their data to servers in Chinese jurisdictions, endangering U.S. national security.
OnePlus is a well-known Chinese mobile phone brand.
Liu Dadong said, “When using any electronic products in China, you are essentially exposed. You are presumed to be under surveillance; there’s no point in countering with Chinese-made phones for investigation purposes, especially for amateurs.”
After experiencing an incident in his family, Liu Dadong’s younger brother conversed with family through WeChat about some topics, and almost all the details were monitored by the CCP.
“How did I find out? During a casual conversation with my mother, she mentioned that the police mentioned to her some private topics my brother and she discussed.”
“If they have the ability to target you, it means they can target everyone,” he said.
Liu Dadong mentioned that even if you use Apple phones in China, Apple wants to access the Chinese market, so they make concessions on security. Therefore, Apple phones that enter through CCP-approved channels are not safe.
“If smuggled phones come in, they might work, but I suspect the CCP-controlled operators would expel such phones. They might use a different monitoring mechanism than that of CCP-made phones, still able to achieve a certain level of surveillance.”
He suggested opting for an old-fashioned Nokia phone with minimal features for communication if you wish not to be monitored. Since Nokia is quite primitive with only basic call functions and no camera, it’s hard to monitor your activities.
In October 2018, during the intense election campaign in Taiwan, Liu Dadong’s younger brother, Liu Dasheng, made a video praising Taiwan, categorizing him as Taiwan independent by the CCP.
“As a family member of a Taiwan independence supporter, I quickly felt pressure from the government, an experience I had never encountered before,” he said. “I saw many people attacking my brother online, calling him a Taiwan separatist, so I tried to defend him. As a result, my account was directly shut down without any warning.”
“It was the first time in my life that I faced direct state violence, with the local police station visiting my parents sporadically, and my brother’s company secretary calling me to inquire about my brother’s situation.”
“My brother had just left the country and said if he spoke out in China, his account would be deactivated immediately.”