China blocks access to shipment tracking data. Report Ft
China blocked public access to shipment tracking data, citing national security concerns. "Another sign of his determination to control sources of sensitive information," writes the Financial Times
The number of vessel automatic identification system (AIS) signals in Chinese waters has dropped dramatically from a peak of more than 15 million per day in October to just over 1 million per day in early November, the Financial said. Times .
AIS was initially developed to help avoid ship collisions and support disaster rescue efforts. But it has also become a valuable tool for improving supply chain visibility and, for governments, for tracking activities in overseas ports.
"What emerges from these data endangers China's economic security and the damage cannot be ignored," a Chinese state media report warned on November 1 about AIS stations in coastal Guangdong province.
Authorities interviewed in the report said foreign intelligence agencies, companies and think-tanks use the system to keep an eye on China's military ships and analyze economic activity by overseeing freight traffic.
The decline in AIS data is one of the first effects of the new Chinese data protection regime, which limits transfers of sensitive information abroad. Companies that want to send important data overseas must undergo a security assessment with the country's data supervisor.
Anastassis Touros, head of the AIS team at information provider MarineTraffic, said he did not believe that AIS data poses a national security risk and that military vessels often hide their location from trackers.
The decline in AIS data since the first week of November has impacted shipping companies' ability to accurately track activity in Chinese ports, said Charlotte Cook, chief business analyst at VesselsValue, a maritime data provider.
Touros said decreased visibility would likely cause more congestion in Chinese ports, which have been stuck amidst bad weather and pandemic-related disruptions, as it would become more difficult to time ship arrivals with low-traffic periods. But a shipping executive and two shippers said a lack of terrestrial AIS data is unlikely to cause worse bottlenecks.
The safety of ships sailing in Chinese waters is also unlikely to be affected, said Gregory Poling, the co-author of a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies who used AIS data to analyze militia deployments. Poling said Chinese officials will have other ways to track ships across coastal waters.
The AIS data gives analysts insights into port activity globally, but China is unique in seeing this data as a national security concern. Touros noted that even the strict European General Data Protection Regulation does not restrict providers from using AIS.
But Beijing is more sensitive to sharing geolocation data, as evidenced by the punishment imposed on ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing for alleged data breaches.
"Collecting and sharing geolocation data, especially when it comes to shipping routes up and down the Chinese coast, is a highly sensitive issue," said Carolyn Bigg, a Hong Kong-based technology lawyer at DLA Piper.
(Extract from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/la-cina-blocca-laccesso-ai-dati-di-localizzazione-delle-spedizioni-report-ft/ on Sat, 27 Nov 2021 06:08:16 +0000.