Locustland | Hu Jia explains why mobile apps make activism spooky

The convergence of text and voice messaging in tools like WhatsApp, the well-known activist says, has made real-time surveillance not just possible but highly cost-effective.

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Published: 1:59pm, 15 Nov 2012Updated: 5:41pm, 15 Nov 2012

Earlier this week, well-known dissident Hu Jia complained on Twitter about how easy WeChat - a slick text and voice instant messaging app developed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent that closely resembles WhatsApp - has made it to keep him and other Chinese dissidents under real-time surveillance.

Hu says he isn't choosing to single out the company, rather that the Guobao - the domestic security arm of China's Public Security Bureau - has for years relied heavily on Tencent for surveillance work due to the high degree of popularity of its products and hundreds of millions of users in China.

We got in touch with Hu to get some details on why he says WeChat now makes it possible for state agents to carry out the kind of surveillance we're used to seeing in futuristic sci-fi movies.

The first indication, Hu says, came when friends began telling him voice-message exchanges they'd had through WeChat were being recited by Guobao in precise and full detail almost immediately after taking place.

"For example, conversations will have just finished an hour ago and already they're interrogating friends about the content."

One of the features that makes WeChat so popular, Hu says, is the ability to leave voice messages that can be read on-demand.

While on one hand this allows users to skip idle chatter and get straight to, say, deciding on a place to meet, it also means the information that is sent is often exactly what activists' silent interlocutors, historically, have had to spend the majority of their surveillance details waiting for.