How Chinese police use Oracle software to track down dissidents and "unwanted" minorities

In mid-February 2021, Oracle was accused of selling analytical software to the Chinese police. It is believed that this software is used to track down political dissidents and isolate "undesirable" minorities, such as Uighur Muslims.

According to the report of journalists Mara Hvistendahl, Tatiana Dias and W. Paul Smith, the Chinese police needed sophisticated analytical software to process a lot of data from financial reports, travel information, vehicle registration, social media data and surveillance video. Oracle helped work with police data, as reported by the company's engineer at a professional developer conference.

Chinese police use Oracle software to track down dissidents and "unwanted" minorities

One of the slides showed Oracle software that allows Liaoning police to create network graphs based on hotel registrations and other data and using them to "identify potential suspects," which in China often means dissidents. Oracle also said that the company's data protection services were used by the police in Xinjiang, the site of persecution of Muslim Uighurs and other ethnic groups. Oracle employees also suggested using corporate technologies in the Chinese big data platform Police Cloud, introduced in China as part of an evolving surveillance system.

According to journalists, this information paints an alarming picture of how a technology company sacrifices declared values ​ ​ for profit. The representative of Oracle Jessica Moore denies that the company sold ON for the analysis of data "to the end users meant in these materials. Such activity will be considered incompatible with the core values ​ ​ of Oracle's corporate ethics^[1]

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