China is closely tracking the locations of almost 2.6m people in its north-west region of Xinjiang, where Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are under a police lockdown, a data leak has revealed.
A facial-recognition company and police contractor called SenseNets collected nearly 6.7m GPS co-ordinates in one database in a 24-hour period, according to security researcher Victor Gevers who found the database.
This location data was matched to names — many of which were Uighur — as well as ID numbers, home addresses, photos, and employers, said Mr Gevers, who said he also discovered a large number of organisations were connecting to the database, including police stations, hotels, and various companies.