The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) is charging 40 members of China’s national police with crimes related to a coordinated campaign of targeted harassment of U.S. residents.
Forty officers of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and two employees of the Cyberspace Administration of China conspired to transmit interstate threats and otherwise harass dissidents and pro-democracy activists living in the United States and elsewhere, according to DOJ documents unsealed on April 17. Forty-four defendants were charged in total.
The MPS officers are part of an elite task force in China called the “912 Special Project Working Group,” referred to in DOJ documents simply as “the Group.”
The alleged purpose of the Group is to target and silence Chinese dissidents on a global scale.
CCP Targeting US Residents
The defendants allegedly carried out highly coordinated transnational repression schemes targeting U.S. residents whose political views are considered anathema by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state.As part of this effort, officers from the Group created and used thousands of fake social media accounts across multiple U.S.-owned platforms, including Twitter, to harass and intimidate dissidents and advocates for democratic processes in China.
Much of the activities took place on a platform created and operated by a U.S. company, referred to in DOJ documents simply as “Company-1.”
The Group also allegedly worked with an employee in Company-1 to leverage the thousands of phony social media accounts for harassment and outright threats against those critical of the CCP.
The officers also sought to crash online video conferences on the platform, filling chats with threats and obscenities, and to get anti-communist events banned from social media.
“China’s Ministry of Public Security used operatives to target people of Chinese descent who had the courage to speak out against the Chinese Communist Party—in one case by covertly spreading propaganda to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and, in another, by suppressing U.S. video conferencing users’ free speech,” FBI Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow said.
Chinese Propaganda on US Social Media
The Group didn’t stop at seeking to suppress dissident voices.The documents show the officers also used U.S. social media to spread CCP propaganda and disinformation intended to undermine U.S. national security and election integrity. The Group spread content that claimed that U.S. democracy was inevitably doomed, alleged that the United States created COVID-19, and promoted false information about U.S. elections.
The defendants also attempted to recruit U.S. citizens to act as unwitting agents of the regime by encouraging them to disseminate the propaganda online, effectively laundering the CCP’s bogus claims.
DOJ documents reveal that the Group developed profiles on U.S. social media users assessed to be sympathetic to the regime then used their fraudulent accounts to directly approach and ask those people to disseminate content created by the Group.
“These cases demonstrate the lengths the [Chinese] government will go to silence and harass U.S. persons who exercise their fundamental rights to speak out against [its] oppression, including by unlawfully exploiting a U.S.-based technology company,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said.
“These actions violate our laws and are an affront to our democratic values and basic human rights.”
All of the officers charged currently reside in either China or Indonesia and are considered to be at large.
“These complex investigations revealed an MPS-wide effort to repress individuals by using the U.S. communications platform and fake social media accounts to censor political and religious speech,” David Sundberg, FBI assistant director in charge, said.
“In the United States, the freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the FBI will work tirelessly to defend everyone’s right to speak freely without fear of retribution from the CCP.”
