Athlete surveillance warnings cloud China's Winter Olympics

BEIJING: A growing number of Western nations and cybersecurity groups have issued digital surveillance warnings for next month's Winter Olympics in Beijing, with some advising foreign athletes to leave personal phones and laptops at home.

China hopes to pull off a successful, coronavirus-free Games that will burnish its international reputation.

But the run-up has been fraught with political controversies including diplomatic boycotts over Beijing's rights record and worries about the safety of tennis star Peng Shuai, who was not seen for weeks after accusing a former Communist Party leader of sexual assault.

Now concerns are focusing on whether the tens of thousands of foreign athletes, dignitaries and media workers will be safe from China's vast array of surveillance tools.

Everyone taking part in the Games will operate in a bubble that separates them from the rest of the population, to reduce the chances of the coronavirus spreading into China, which sticks to a strict zero-COVID policy.

Earlier this week, researchers at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab said a virus-monitoring app all attendees must use was found to have a "simple but devastating" encryption flaw that could allow personal data including health information and voice messages to leak.

Citizen Lab said it notified Beijing organisers of the issues in early December, but received no reply.

"China has a history of undermining encryption technology to perform political censorship and surveillance," researcher Jeffrey Knockel wrote.

"As such, it is reasonable to ask whether the encryption in this app was intentionally sabotaged for surveillance purposes or whether the defect was born of developer negligence."

Canberra-based cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 also