Today @Reuters published my investigation into how Chinese telecoms giant ZTE is helping Venezuela build a system that monitors citizen behavior through a new ID card, known as the “fatherland card.” Here´s a thread on how the story developed 1/14 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-zte/ …

I moved to Venezuela just before Maduro´s May re-election. That day, I was fascinated by the govt´s use of so-called red point stands to record who had turned out to vote. Socialist Party activists were scanning voters´ fatherland cards and promising them prizes for doing so 2/14

Maduro for the past year had urged citizens to sign up for the card, calling it essential to “build the new Venezuela.” 18 mln have done so, per state figures. His govt is increasingly linking the card to subsidized food, health and other social programs. 3/14

People without the card find themselves excluded from services they need to survive the economic crisis. One 76-year-old diabetic told me a state doctor had recently refused to give him insulin and called him “right-wing” because he did not want to enroll. 4/14

I wanted to know where the data went and who had built the system. For several months I have spoken to dozens of people involved, mostly from ZTE, the Justice Ministry, and Venezuela’s state telecom firm Cantv, which manages its database. 5/14

The database, per my reporting, stores: family information, employment and income, property owned, medical history, state benefits received, presence on social media, membership of a political party, participation in Socialist Party events, and whether a person voted. 6/14

Here’s an example of how the govt is using it. After the May election, state institutions sent Cantv lists with employees’ names to determine whether they had voted. They then drew up reports with the names of officials who did not vote. 7/14

Although the database only registers if a person voted, not how, local Socialist party organizers were told in May to spread the belief that peoples’ votes could be tracked. “We’ll find out if you voted for or against,” one organizer said she told them. 8/14

The fatherland system is modeled on China’s Social Credit System which grades citizens on their behavior. In 2008, Chavez sent officials to Shenzhen, where at ZTE’s HQ they learned how they could monitor citizens by using vast databases to store info gathered by smart cards 9/14

One member of this Venezuelan delegation told me he was beaten and extorted after he raised concerns with other officials about how Chavez’s government planned to use such a system for citizen control. He then fled to the USA. 10/14

After 8 years of false starts, Maduro launched the fatherland card in December 2016. After hackers broke into an early version of the fatherland platform, designed by former Cuban state officials (working at company in photo), Maduro brought in ZTE to revamp it. 11/14

Critics say the fatherland card illustrates how China, through state-linked companies like ZTE, exports technological know-how that can help like-minded governments track, reward and punish citizens. 12/14

In response to my story, @marcorubio said: “The Maduro regime’s increasing reliance on ZTE in Venezuela is just the latest example of the threat that Chinese state-directed firms pose to U.S. national security interests.” 13/14

With the fatherland system, as opposition lawmaker Mariela Magallanes (who headed a commission to investigate it) told me, now “The government knows exactly who is most vulnerable to pressure.” 14/14

You can follow @AABerwick.

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