Overview
- Investigations by major outlets found a Zhangjiakou, Hebei police database was at one time publicly viewable and contained records for roughly 12,000 people, including more than 700 foreign residents of the city.
- Cybersecurity researcher Mark Hofer located the site this year and reporting says it remained accessible into the spring before being closed.
- The exposed material ranged from basic identifiers such as names, birthdates and passport numbers to CCTV footage, facial‑recognition outputs, movement logs, medical records and billing data.
- About 300 foreign reporters appeared in the dataset and screenshots shown to journalists listed media affiliations and identifiable details, a finding confirmed by a former New York Times Beijing correspondent and Japanese outlets.
- The disclosures raise clear risks to individuals and press freedom and could have diplomatic fallout, while researchers say the local system’s development began around 2021 and fits a wider pattern of municipal biometric data projects.