KB444621: Security Considerations of Submitting Passport Application In Person in China

Introduction

Li Ao needed to obtain a new passport as replacement, as the counsulate staff informed him that his current one has been in contact with water, and the performance was not suitable for use. He needed to conduct an evaulation on the situation of possible service locations, of which the locations accept passport applications from applicants in-person, before visiting one of them to make the request.

The main concern of him, for the purpose of writing this article is that, the computer system of Ministry of Public Security departments may falsely report that he is the person that needs to be arrested, which may result in serve human rights violations. He needs to evaluate whether or not to proceed with the application.

Symptoms

Li Ao needs to estimate the possibilities of occurances of an event that the computer system of Ministry of Public Security shows up indications that he is a person which is being published by any of MPS departments as a criminal in exile, to ensure safety of his visit. He also needs to evaluate the potential risks that may disallow him from escaping from the premise of MPS Exit and Entry facilities, in case the computer system falsely reports that he is the wanted person as being a criminal in exile, and the exit is blocked in response of such event.

Solution

By conducting analysis on a broad range of behaviours of MPS staff members, of whom covers a wide varienty of different saturations, Li Ao has interpreted the facts, this include but not limited to the following:

-- Most of the MPS staff members are, or originally are, police officers which are recruited by conducting a relatively fixed recruitment system, designed and dictated by the MPS. Despite local MPS agencies may have less decision power on the adjustments of the policy, the broad definition cannot be changed and future moderation process ensures that only persons have particular characteristics shall be recruited.

-- Because of the fixed, outdated recruitment system, and other consequences of the governance model of China, people recruited to the MPS, including those later being allocated to serve for service centers, which includes Chinese NRIC service acceptance as well as passport services, are not good educated on subjects of social science and people's behaviours, which allows chances of Li Ao to interpret details of their behaviours in order to depict possible responses in the event of a report by the computer system.

-- The MPS will not seek for a explicit response which can cause the applicant's attention, under circumstances that the applicant's Chinese NRIC number is under the list of wanted person; however, because of lack of computer science knowledges, such warning should be accessible on the reception's computer screen and should be made to display explicitly with details on-screen. Furthermore, upon noticing such differences during business acceptance, the receptions should be having tiny responses expressed by them, for example, small pauses, which allows Li Ao to start emergency response as early as possible.

-- From prior behaviours Li Ao has learnt from people with little knowledge on behaviours of human being but being educated by communism education systems with the way of informing police forces to prevent a person which has been deemed as "abnormal" in communism ideology, those people will often performance badly especially on the interactions with the people they need to take control of. For example, a random reason which often comes with no facts as supplementary to their claims, may be presented, as a result such lies may be easily identified. Additionally, abnormal procedure may be given to the applicant under these cases.

-- Because of lack of computer science knowledges of MPS staff no unified alarm signal is designed across different regions, and with regions having poorly economic development the alarm response system may even not designated.

He decided to request a replacement passport at a service center in-person, which is located in Xuzhou City of Jiangsu, China.

Solution

From prior evaluations service staff will behave abnormally which can catch his attention, and he has the ability of leaving the premise before police officers come. Despite police officers come, he still has the ability of gaining a chance to protect himself from being prosecuted in the way of direct body contacts.

Li Ao estimated that staff at the service acceptance area will most likely to behave abnormally after received information from computers informing such information. Self assessment guaranteed that he will be able to pay close attention to the service staff in the premise.

He planned to take attention and learn from the behaviour of service staff serving other applicants, in order to interpret possible procedure which will be applied to him. He also planned to talk to the service staff at random time to ensure that they are on the normal process of serving the applicant, instead of having abnormal behaviours.

In an event of unintended police entry targeting him that may happen, he also prepared a way of conversation with police officers to ensure power will be limited which gives him the ability of escaping. Upon evaulation, he believes that such ability sufficiently protects him from prosecution imposed by direct body contacts.

Because of frequent bank business acceptance and during such processes his Chinese NRIC was presented, it's of high confidence that he was not currently in the wanted list of MPS published by any MPS agencies, as no police officers interfered with the bank business. Evaluation took consideration of this factor as a strong indication of a possible safe application with no police interference during the business acceptance.

Overall risk classification concluded that this time of place visit has very little possibilities of resulting in MPS' computer system to report himself as a wanted person. In conclusion, normal precautionary measures will be taken and defense will be specifically applied on possible arrest mistakes of police officers, regardless of computer system indications, for example another person on-premise is being targeted.

Outcome

In the early stage of reception, Li Ao presented his Chinese NRIC and a staff placed the card onto a machine which is used to automatically fill out the application form. The machine was able to print out a document with his current passport number. A staff member later provided his NRIC card back after possibly a document copy process, which told information that no alarms were triggered prior to that time. A staff member also responded to his questions stating that the whole process should be around 5 minutes.

During business acceptance, Li Ao was able to confirm that staff members performanced normally. A dialog window with unknown contents was appeared on the reception's computer screen, however from responses of staff members these should be in normal procedure and was not reporting arrestment information. The staff later requested the applicant to fill in a form making statement of a lost passport, and then later, quickly asked for payment of his application. At the time Li Ao was asked for payment he confirmed that no alarms were triggered in the reception process.

The staff was later provided a leaflet notifying the acceptance of application, with a date for picking-up.