China’s Ministry of State Security revealed on Wednesday that foreign intelligence agencies are using crowdsourcing to gather sensitive data in China, posing a covert but serious threat to national security.
This covert method, dubbed “crowdsourced espionage,” poses an escalating threat. Foreign intelligence agencies break down intelligence-gathering missions into smaller, discrete tasks and distribute them via legitimate crowdsourcing platforms. Unwitting participants are recruited to carry out seemingly harmless data collection tasks, often unaware of the true intent behind their assignments. These individual data points are then analyzed and pieced together, enabling the agencies to acquire sensitive information.
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Source: Global Times News
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