The Beijing Winter Olympics begin on February 4, and the Paralympic Games on March 4. China has thus entered the final phase of planning for the Winter Olympics, whose perhaps most watched disciplines will be to keep not only the Covid-19, but also the political views of athletes.
Following a briefing by Human Rights Watch, which warned of the risks of anyone commenting on the human rights situation in China, Beijing also warned that overly eloquent athletes will face punishment.
“I am sure that statements that are in line with the Olympic spirit will be protected. Anything and any conduct or manifestation that is against the Olympic spirit, especially Chinese laws and regulations, will be subject to a certain penalty, “said Yang Shu, Deputy Director General of International Relations 2022. He indicated that the penalty could take the form of deregistration. .
The International Olympic Committee refers to its guidelines, which protect the neutrality of sports and games: “The Games are governed by IOC rules and will be applied in Beijing 2022 as at any other game before.”
Last summer before the Tokyo Games, the IOC lifted a ban on protests and allowed athletes to “express their views” during press conferences – but political demonstrations are still banned on medal stages.
Global Athlete – a group led by athletes that is striving for “positive change” in world sports – said it was “ridiculous” to order athletes to hide protests at home. However, she warned not to count on IOC protection.
My2022
Another report published in recent hours has raised concerns about the safety of the Olympics. According to security analysts, the mandatory smartphone application that athletes will use to report health and travel data during their stay in China contains serious encryption errors. This raises further questions about the systems that Beijing plans to use to trace covid outbreaks.
Portions of My2022 did not verify the signature used in encrypted transmissions or did not encrypt the data at all, according to a report from Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary lab based at the University of Toronto. Citizen Lab focuses on information control, Internet security and human rights threats. The application is intended to serve athletes, audience visitors and journalists. In addition, it offers a voice chat function, file sending and news from Olympic events.
In the context of the Olympics, this is far from the first safety warning regarding mobile phones.
On Tuesday, the cyber security company Internet 2.0 recommended bringing so-called burner phones to Beijing – prepaid one-off phones, or creating special temporary e-mail accounts. Several countries have advised their representatives to leave their mobile phones at home.
Not just censorship
The Citizen Lab report says there is a list of “censorship keywords” built into the application and a feature that prevents the use of “politically sensitive” terms. The list of words includes the names of Chinese leaders and government agencies, as well as references to the killing of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 or the Fa-lung-kung religious group, which is banned in China.
Analysts note that these features and security flaws are not uncommon for applications in China. At present, the list of “illegal words” should be inactive, but this cannot be said with certainty, experts say.
All visitors to the games must download the application 14 days before leaving for China and record their health daily. Data on foreign visitors, such as passport or travel and medical history data, are provided to the Chinese government.
Citizen Lab said that if targeted, the vulnerabilities in the application software could easily be exploited by hackers. China’s state-run Global Times rejected these concerns in a Tuesday report, saying “all personal information will be encrypted to ensure privacy.”
However, the danger goes far beyond fears of censorship. The BBC has an Internet 2.0 report that emphasizes the importance of using disposable phones and reminds users not to use them when they return from China.
The report looked at some of the game’s technology sponsors and their products to show the “sophisticated and broad surveillance culture that exists in China.” One of the researched products is a VPN from Qi-Anxin, which can capture a large amount of user data.
Under Chinese national security laws, the Chinese authorities may request access to this data. “China’s national data security laws are not designed with Western values of privacy and freedom in mind and do not offer the same level of protection,” the report said.
MOV: It’s up to the users
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) also provided a statement to the Deutsche-Welle server, which provided a specific and detailed description of the shortcomings of the My2022 application. In an e-mail, he said that “the ‘My2022’ application is an important tool in the anti-Covid-19 measures”.
Citing Citizen Lab that medical data, medical history or passport numbers are vulnerable to hacker attacks, the IOC argued that the application had been assessed by two cybersecurity testing organizations and did not reveal any “critical vulnerabilities”.
MOV claims that the user can configure the application to deny access to features such as “files and media, calendar, camera, contacts”, as well as the user’s location, phone, and phone microphone. “The user has control over what the application has access to on his device. It can change the settings when the application is installed or at any time later. “
Although the Citizen Lab report states that the application is “mandatory”, the IOC claims otherwise. “Installation is not mandatory because accredited staff can log in to the health monitoring system on the website instead.” international users ’.
The United States, for example, has recommended the use of temporary telephones or disposable computers to its athletes. “Like computers, data and applications on mobile phones are exposed to malicious data intrusion, infection and compromise,” USA Today quotes a special Olympic bulletin.
Disposable mobile phones are probably also “dumped” by German athletes. Due to the risk of espionage, it was recommended by the German Olympic Federation (DOSB), writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
DOSB does not explicitly state the risk of espionage as a reason for the recommendation. But the British and Dutch, who recommended the same step to their athletes, are talking about him. The British Olympic Committee has warned athletes not to take their private phones to China and is offering them a replacement.
Without a private phone and a computer, the Dutch will travel by order of the Olympic Committee. In addition, the spare equipment they receive specifically for the games is to be destroyed when they return home, the local newspaper De Volkskrant reported. The same has been done in the Netherlands for a long time after the return of diplomats or officials from China.
The Dutch committee explicitly warned of the danger of espionage by the Chinese secret services. A spokesman for the International Olympic Committee declined to comment on the Dutch warning.
The Dutch daily recalls that surveillance and wiretapping at the accommodation of athletes, journalists and visitors to the games were already the practice of the Chinese authorities at the 2008 Games.
