China is collecting Indian voice samples. Is this a new spying technique?

The spy films of our times often focus on a time long gone - be it the Cold War, the World Wars or the India-Pakistan wars. But the aegis of espionage is no longer men and women in hats and newspapers covering their faces, rather, it's the surreptitious technology.

In the latest, a US-based think tank, New Kite Data Labs, has claimed that China is collecting voice samples of Indian nationals for unknown purposes. The report says Chinese agents are collecting specific voice samples of Indians living in the border regions or "military sensitive regions" like Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.

Very excited to announce it latest report on how China is using the civil military fusion state to obfuscate it's data gathering apparatus for state security purposes. The fact there is a US permanent resident cooperating with Chinese security makes it doubly worrying https://t.co/yTYFSYtrP3

— Davos Bro Balding 大老板 (@BaldingsWorld) August 29, 2022

How? The report names a Beijing-based AI company Speechocean for collecting the data through a New Delhi-based BPO firm. This firm pays some amount of money to specific Indians to record varied phrases in their original accent. This data is later sold to Speechocean. 

According to New Kite Data Labs, the AI company has close links with the Chinese security agencies and the PLA (People's Liberation Army) and is "known" to sell data and technology to them. 

What will China do with the voice samples? It is unknown why China is collecting Indian voice samples and what it intends to do with it. However, going by China's record, Beijing could be using the samples to create a database that can identify a speaker by their voice or even clone the voices for later use.

It turned out to be voice data being sent to this company called SpeechOcean.
SpeechOcean, on the surface, is a private company operating in the tech space in China. However, in reality, it is deeply embedded into the state security apparatus
(3/7)

— Amal Sinha (@that_data_chap) August 29, 2022

China is also reportedly collecting voice samples of its own citizens as part of its larger surveillance program. It will enable Beijing to create a complete digital profile of every Chinese citizen - from their face (facial recognition), DNA (DNA sampling), and trackers (on phones) to the voice samples. Besides this, China's Google equivalent Baidu, released a white paper in 2018 detailing how it can clone a voice just by using a seconds-long clip.

In a world where we can already place a person's face to someone else's in videos through deep fake, voice cloning would only complete the entire process. There are fears that this can lead to sophisticated fake news videos as well, and China can use it as part of its propaganda. 

How does China spy? In the 20th century, Russia's KGB was famous or infamous for running a sophisticated spy network across the world. In the 21st century, the turn is China's. China's leading spy agency, Guoanbu, is known for having an extensive visible and invisible network all over the world. 

As for India, the concerns have been from various directions: 

Hambantota spy ship: Recently, the Chinese surveillance ship that docked in Sri Lanka's Hambantota port irked the Indian government to great extent. The Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, very close to Indian shores, was leased out to China by Colombo as part of debt repayment. 

#ChinaSriLanka
The Yuan Wang 5, #China's missile and satellite tracking ship which had berthed at Hambantota port in #SriLanka departed. There were grave concerns that the ship could conduct satellite research in the northwestern part of the Indian Ocean region. pic.twitter.com/eCKez8vfuH

— Global Watch (@GlobalWatch_) August 25, 2022

Huawei network in Mauritius: For Indian defense forces, there's another national security threat coming from the Indian ocean. Huawei, a Chinese telecom company, has established its network in Mauritius and India fears the company will be able to interfere and intercept India's communications and security systems placed in coastal areas. Huawei has already earned a bad reputation around the world and has been accused of spying for the Chinese government. 

Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) issued multiple warnings last year, about the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) using internet infrastructure built by Chinese firm Huawei in Mauritius to conduct digital espionage against India and Western targets across the Indian Ocean.

— 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧 🇮🇳 (@TheAvenger82) July 28, 2022

Loan apps and private clubs: The instant loan apps in India behind the stories of harassment and abuse of local borrowers have their fair share of Chinese financial backing. Recently, ED had allegedly found that substantial amounts of money from India, linked to loan apps, were being routed to unknown accounts in China through cryptocurrency. China, using the loan apps, can also find out the financial details of Indian citizens. 

Moreover, in June this year, the Noida Police allegedly busted what they thought is a Chinese spy ring. Several Chinese nationals were found living illegally in India and some of them even possessed Indian passports and other Indian identification cards like the Aadhaar card. 

The big data mining: In a 2021 expose, reports said that China had collected the personal data of some 10,000 Indian nationals including VVIPs like Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While the data included small details and irrelevant information, big data mining, as it is called, can help build a digital profile of an individual. 

China's physical playgrounds: Like the Hambantota port, China has other physical playgrounds surrounding India, that is in Pakistan and Nepal. Already, the China-Pakistan economic corridor is looked at with suspicion by the Indian government.