Chinese authorities are obtaining personal data from the phones of tourists entering China’s far western region of Xinjiang, using a secretly installed mobile app, according to a joint investigation by Western media outlets.
At the border crossing from Kyrgyzstan to the Xinjiang region, tourists are asked to unlock and hand over their phones and computers to border agents, who then take the devices into a separate room to scan them, according to the investigation by The Guardian, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German-based radio network NDR, The New York Times, and Motherboard (part of Vice).