Police in China say they have arrested about 15,000 people for crimes that “jeopardised internet security”, as the government moves to tighten controls on the internet.
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More than 7,400 cases, including hacking, online fraud and the illegal sale of personal information, were investigated by police, said a statement published on the official website of the ministry. It hasn’t clarify the number of competitors time period the checks were created, but referenced an instance romance to really last December.
According to professor Xiao Qiang from the UC Berkeley School of Information in California, a crackdown on cybercrime of this scale is something that China has never faced before, Al Jazeera reported.
He said the announcement of the mass arrests, which come amid a public outcry over the August 12 explosions at a warehouse that killed more than 100 people in Tianjin, could also be as an indirect warning against dissent.
Following the mass arrests of alleged hackers, 50 sites believed to “incite panic” while covering the Tianjin blasts apocryphally have been closed or temporarily suspended by the main internet watchdog in the country, Cyberspace Administration of China. The campaign will focus on breaking major cases and destroying online criminal gangs, it added.
“For the next step, the public security organs will continue to increase their investigation and crack down on cybercrimes”, the ministry said.
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“The Chinese authorities must end their assault on human rights lawyers”, Amnesty global said last month after more than 50 lawyers and activists were targeted by police since July 9.
