New Year, Same Problems

We are starting the new year with some old problems.  In Reuters today is a story of WeChat”s denial that it stores chat sessions of users.  That seems to be a small problem compared to what the issue should be, because there could be no doubt that WeChat stores user chat sessions, screens them for censored content, sends back user information to China - including some really interesting items like the WiFi connections and hard drive serial numbers of users- and, in general, does anything else the central government of China wants it to do.  I can’t imagine why they would bother to deny any of these things, since the government requires them all.

What the world worries about is not that China requires these things of its companies for Chinese citizens, but that it also requires companies to do the same thing for other users, regardless of nationality.  WeChat would have you believe they behave one way for their main audience in China, and another for all of those computers and cell phones in India.  Not likely.  They would have to have separate services and servers for each country with different laws, and that is not likely to occur.  It is too expensive to do business that way, and the government would not want them to not collect data on users of their software.  TenCent is an agent of the government, not an independent free agent - it is on team China.  So, why deny it?

The user data is worth a lot of money and has intelligence value beyond that.  If users thought they were using that data to snoop on them - which WeChat does not do, but the government does - then, people might stop using their software.  That means less revenue and less intelligence value for China.  Denial is part of the game.  Even when faced with the truth, China denies what we can clearly see.  A majority of users will use it anyway, even if they know what it is used for.  An important, informed minority will not, and that is of concern to China.  Those are the very people they want to monitor.