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A leaked database appears to show that Chinese company Zhenhua Data has collected data on 2.4 million people, in an attempt to carry out 'psychological warfare'.
The data - including addresses, dates of birth, marital status, criminal records and political associations - appears to have been largely harvested from social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Crunchbase, TikTok and LinkedIn. However, around 20 per cent appears to have come from sources not in the public domain.
While only a part of the database has been recovered, this contains individual profiles for 52,000 Americans, 35,000 Australians, 10,000 Indians; 9,700 Britons and 5,000 Canadians.
They include senior figures from political leaders such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison to singer Natalie Imbruglia and members of the British royal family.
The database was shared with US academic Professor Christopher Balding, who says: "The database built by Shenzhen Zhenhua from a variety of sources is technically complex using very advanced language, targeting, and classification tools."
He adds: "The data appears used to support Chinese intelligence, military, security, and state operations in information warfare and influence targeting."
Zhenhua Data also provides big data analytics, and is said to have links to Chinese military and intelligence networks, numbering the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party amongst its major clients.
Representatives of the company have denied any ill intent, claiming that all the data is available from public sources and that the database simply connects individuals to the social media they use.
However, according to the Australian Financial Review, a page on Zhenhua’s website - now taken down - pointed out that "Social media can manipulate reality and weaken a country’s administrative, social, military, or economic forces", and that such 'hybrid warfare' is "less expensive than traditional warfare".
Balding points out that Zhenhua operates data collection centers in a number of foreign countries, and is likely breaking laws in foreign jurisdictions.
"Open liberal democracies must consider how best to deal with the very real threats presented by Chinese monitoring of foreign individuals and institutions outside established legal limits. Increased data protections and privacy limits should be considered," he says.
"The threat of surveillance and monitoring of foreign individuals by an authoritarian China is very real. Open liberal democratic states can no longer pretend these threats do not exist."
