BEIJING – The local government has asked some Beijing citizens returning from domestic travel to wear Covid-19 surveillance bracelets, prompting widespread complaints on Chinese social media from users involved about excessive government surveillance.
According to messages posted on Wednesday night, July thirteenth and Thursday morning on the microblogging platform Weibo, some Beijing citizens returning to the capital were invited through their community committees to wear an electronic bracelet during the house’s mandatory quarantine period.
Chinese cities are not easy to quarantine those arriving from parts of China where Covid-19 cases have been discovered. Authorities are equipping doors with motion sensors to monitor their movements, but so far they have not widely discussed the use of electronic wristbands.
The wristbands monitor users’ temperature and upload the knowledge to a phone app they had to download, according to the messages.
“This bracelet can be connected to the Internet, it can indeed record my whereabouts, it is essentially the same as electronic chains and handcuffs, I probably wouldn’t wear it,” Weibo user Dahongmao wrote Wednesday night, declining to comment further when contacted through it. Reuters.
That post and others sharing photos of the bracelets were removed Thursday afternoon, along with a similar hashtag that had garnered more than 30 million views, sparking a discussion on the platform.
An employee of the network in Tiantongyuan, beijing’s northern suburb, showed state-backed media outlet Eastday that the measure was in place in the neighborhood and called the practice “excessive. “
A Weibo post and a video posted on Eastday’s official account were deleted Thursday afternoon.
Weibo user Dahongmao wrote Thursday afternoon that his community committee had already picked up the bracelets and told him there were “too many complaints. “
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The protest against electronic bracelets comes at a time of expanding COVID-19 fatigue in China, with disobedience and crime since a national outbreak in March.
The Beijing government may not be contacted for comment after general business hours.
In addition to Beijing, several other regions and jurisdictions have brought bracelets as a covid-19 measure, or plan to do so, adding Hong Kong, Henan, Inner Mongolia and Zhejiang, according to Chinese news site Jiemian.
But knowledge privacy issues and the use of Covid-19 surveillance generation for other purposes, such as alerting fitness codes to prevent protesters from gathering, have made many Chinese wary of those devices and apps.