An entire network inside China's Great Firewall is reported to be designed to gather information and it was added that an industry of private and state-owned high technology enterprises is serving it, making it available for sale as well.
"You could go so far as to make the argument that social media and digital technology are actually supporting the regime," says Ronald Deibert, the director of The Citizen Lab, a group of researchers at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs.
The lad studies how information technology affects human rights around the world. They have taken apart apps like WeChat which is commonly used in the Chinese market, owned by Tencent.
Chinese authorities "have a wealth of data at their disposal about what individuals are doing at a micro level in ways that they never had before," Deibert said.
"What the government has managed to do, I think quite successfully, is download the controls to the private sector, to make it incumbent upon them to police their own networks," he added.
He added that it seemed like these datas collected by the firm is available for sale.
Guangzhou Southern Metropolis Daily found that just by using cash, you could buy some information about almost anyone in China.
"I would say it's a very big issue," says The Citizen Lab's Deibert. "It is in contrast to the data minimization philosophy - collect only what you need and keep it for only as long as you need to use it, then delete, delete, delete."
