A German cybersecurity journalist, Marc Hofer, discovered an unsecured prototype policing dashboard affiliated with China's Ministry of Public Security.
The database, titled 'Dynamic Control Platform for Overseas Personnel,' was developed for the Public Security Bureau in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province. It contained profiles of approximately 350 foreign journalists based in Beijing in 2021, including four Australian reporters.
The dashboard provided location data at a district level and included detailed profiles with headshots, passport details, phone numbers, and dates of birth. Some profiles were marked as 'trackable,' granting access to more granular data such as CCTV records of movements, hospital visits, hotel stays, frequently visited places, and transport details.
The system also featured a 'relationship modeling' function to map connections between individuals. The database was incomplete, lacking mobile phone tracking data. Hofer's findings were published on his NetAskari substack blog.