Hong Kong is everywhere: In Germany protesters are also protesting against restrictions on freedom of choice in the former crown colony, as was the case last weekend. Or they meet in a pub in Berlin's Neukölln district to discuss: Are the goals of the protests achievable or is the Communist Party in Beijing overpowering? Does violence destroy the reputation of the movement?
Many do not want to be recognized or photographed, they wear masks in the demos. For Chinese authorities are also trying to influence the freedom of opinion and the integrity of the demonstrators in Germany, as recently a request of the Greens to the Federal Government revealed.
A focus of the work of Chinese intelligence services is therefore "in spying on and combating movements that challenge their viewpoint of power monopoly from the point of view of the Chinese Communist Party". Where these movements organize, they are often easy to monitor - on social media like Facebook.
For example, the Berlin organizers announced the event series "The last fight for freedom - from Berlin to Hong Kong". Anyone who clicked on "interested" initially only saw which of his friends wanted to come, but not the complete guest list. This changed, however, as soon as one loaded the public appointment into his calendar on the laptop or smartphone: users received a file, which contained a list of all interested participants - including links to the Facebook profiles.
Contradictory statements on the help page
For Chinese intelligence agencies, such a thing could be a good thing to eat. Of course, spies could just go to such events themselves, especially since they are announced for everyone to see. But first, they do not know that alone, as the other participants are called.
Secondly, Facebook makes contradictory statements in its help section: "If it is a public event, everyone on or off Facebook can see whether you are interested or take part," it says on the one hand. "Your friends always see the public events you are interested in or take part in," on the other hand, it says directly afterwards. At the guest list itself is currently displayed: "If friends are interested, you can see this here." So at least some participants may have assumed that only their friends can see if they want to participate.
After a hint of the SPIEGEL changed Facebook its system within two days. The exported appointments no longer contain guest lists. Apparently there were two independent sticking points: The participation in public events was publicly visible on Facebook until July, now the group changes its concept. And if organizers of public events disabled the display of the guest list, this changed setting was not saved according to Facebook. "The problem has now been resolved," the group said, but also states: "No information was made public against the expectations of users."
Information to authority initially remained
The responsible in Germany for Facebook Hamburg Data Protection Authority and the Irish Commissioner for Data Protection have not been informed by Facebook at first about the guest list breakdown. The Green Party sees Facebook but in the duty. "In the meantime, I can no longer count how often Facebook has lost its negligence on sensitive personal user data," says Tabea Rößner, spokeswoman for network policy and consumer protection. "Especially in the present case, Facebook should quickly establish transparency, take responsibility and inform those affected that their information about participation in events were more visible than they thought."
One of the organizers of the Berlin events - she calls herself Alice - calls for transparency from Facebook. Your privacy is important to her. For example, it wants to prevent members of the Communist Party from appearing at their workplace and harassing them. She herself was injured in the umbrella protests five years ago by the police and is still suffering the consequences.
In the months following the demonstrations, the demonstrators were tackled by cyberbullying, Alice says. But even worse for mainland Chinese, who sympathize with the democracy movement: "Their families are in China - it is very likely that they are threatened by the National Security."