Police put everyone on the map

An online police database in the form of a map, that will give instant access to residents' personal details according to address, is almost ready to go live, said Beijing police Tuesday.

Despite concerns over potential security risks, police have assured residents that the data will only be shared between government departments.

"Click on any house on the electronic map, and it will display information about the people living there," said Guan Xihua, media officer with the population management department of Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau (PSB) Tuesday.

Information gathering to match up inhabitants' personal data with residential information started last November, and is still ongoing.

The electronic map displays information such as the location, structure and layout of the house, the inhabitants' name, hometown, gender and occupation. As for rented accommodation, the map will show both landlord and tenant data.

More than 13.2 million pieces of housing data and more than 20.7 million individual facts about population have been collected through home checks by community police.

So far, 87.7 percent of the population information has been matched with residential addresses.

The data gathered includes 6.73 million details from migrant workers and 95,000 facts about foreigners as well.

"The database can help different government bodies to better allocate resources," said Guan.

For example, the education department could optimize the allocation of educational resources according to the distribution of school-age children; the transport and medical sectors could earmark their services judging from an area's population density, Guan noted.

When the map is complete, it will be open only to government departments, so residents should not worry about leaks of their personal information, Guan said.

Wei Wuhui, an Internet and new media expert with Shanghai Jiaotong University, told the Global Times Tuesday that people should not worry unduly about information leaks, as public security authorities already possess this sort of information about them.

The PSB has the right to collect population information, and what they should do now is to protect the data well, for example by designing a strict and safe procedure for other government departments when they share the information, he said.

Khalid Mehmood, a Pakistani who has lived in Beijing for 20 years, said he does not want his personal information to be uploaded to any websites.

"Though I actually don't worry about the information leaks, I feel really uncomfortable to share my home address, my family members' information on the Web. It feels like an invasion of my privacy," he told the Global Times.

Yang Guangzi, a resident in Beijing, believes the map will aid the government's work.

"If there are rules to regulate the circulation of data among different government departments, I have no worries about information leakage," she told the Global Times.

"But is there any possibility that the map could help trace the [Internet]IP addresses of the residents, so that I should pay more attention to what I say online?"

Swagg Security, a Western hacker collective, claimed in their blog that they successfully cracked China Telecom's network and released the user names and passwords of 900 network administrators from the company, reported China News Service on Monday.

The same hackers were alleged to have breached Foxconn a few months ago, according to Yahoo news.

"No website could be guaranteed to be absolutely safe," said Wang Sixin, an Internet expert at the Communication University of China.

"If a map like this is leaked, it will bring more trouble than that caused by the information on an ID card being leaked," Wang said.

Since selling personal information for money is not unusual, government departments should also take measures to prevent anyone who has access to the database from misusing the information, Wang noted.