China’s Draft Web ID Measure Threatens to Tighten On-line Censorship
(5 February 2025) Chinese language Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) and ARTICLE 19 issued an evaluation of the proposed Web ID Measure in China. Though not but adopted, if enacted, the measure will additional limit on-line freedom of expression and entry to data, hinder the work of human rights defenders, breach worldwide human rights requirements, and danger including to more and more repressive web governance norms internationally.
On July 26, 2024, the Ministry of Public Safety (MPS) and the Our on-line world Administration of China (CAC) of the Individuals’s Republic of China (PRC) collectively launched a draft provision, the Administration Measure on Nationwide Community Identification Authentication Public Service (“Web ID Measure”). The Web ID measures would require web customers to register by means of the MPS-developed Nationwide Community Identification Authentication Pilot Version App (“Web ID App”) utilizing their nationwide identification card and facial recognition. Already, over 80 apps started trialing the brand new authentication system inside days of the draft’s launch, together with 10 public service platforms and 71 industrial purposes. Main platforms similar to WeChat, Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Taobao, and Zhaopin have been among the many early adopters.
“Identical to a frog in slowly heating water, residents in China—together with human rights defenders—face steadily tightening restrictions within the on-line house. The proposed Web ID Measure represents one other flip of the warmth, increasing state management over consumer identification and making it simpler than ever to silence dissent. UN our bodies and civil society should act now and urge Beijing to desert this and different rights-eroding web legal guidelines,” mentioned Shane Yi, researcher of CHRD.
“We’ve already witnessed how China’s Cybersecurity Regulation has influenced rising digital authoritarianism world wide, within the creeping adoption of cyber sovereignty information laws and pro-surveillance actual identify registration necessities, amongst others. The adoption of this centralized method to identification verification dangers additional emulation of repressive digital norms as China pushes to remold web governance in its personal repressive picture,” mentioned Michael Caster, ARTICLE 19’s Head of International China Programme.
The Web ID Measure consists of 16 articles, which the MPS and CAC declare are designed to strengthen the implementation of China’s 2017 Cybersecurity Regulation, amongst different provisions, together with provisions from the Ministry of Trade and Info Know-how (MIIT), which all require various types of identification verification.
The brand new Web ID Measure extends centralized management over the digital areas from the purpose of web connection. When customers register on the Web ID App and use the net quantity and certificates to entry different apps and companies, they grant the federal government entry to their complete digital path. This centralized identification verification system successfully offers the MPS and CAC with enhanced functionality to observe China’s 1.1 billion web customers, in addition to folks from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and different international nationals as soon as they register on the Web ID App.
If adopted, the measure would enhance state surveillance and cut back anonymity, placing already at-risk human rights defenders at even larger menace of reprisal. It’s going to centralize management to additional support censorship of undesirable dissenting voices on-line. It offers for no accountability to deal with myriad privateness issues, and dangers extraterritorial purposes. The proposed Web ID Measure is at odds with worldwide human rights norms.
CHRD and ARTICLE 19 name on China to revise the legal guidelines and laws on web governance and cybersecurity to align with worldwide human rights requirements.
For extra data：
Shane Yi, Researcher, China Human Rights Defenders, shaneyi@nchrd.org
Michael Caster, Head of International China Programme, michael.caster@article19.org
