China’s aggressive mass surveillance system just got an upgrade: it now spies on foreigners.

It sounds every bit a dystopian novel, but it isn’t. China is actually spying on tourists and citizens, and it has no plans of stopping any time soon.

According to an investigation by the New York Times, the Chinese government is installing a surveillance app on tourists’ phones as they enter the northwestern Xinjiang region, which is the home of millions of Uighur Muslims. It has been estimated that there are more than one million Uighurs in internment camps, currently.

Mobile Phones Seized

Tourists who are coming in from Central Asia and into Xinjiang are required to hand over their phones and other mobile devices to Chinese border agents. The border agents will then take the mobile devices to a separate room – no additional information is given – and they install an app called Fengcai that basically opens a portal into your digital life.

The app downloads everything in your phone, from calendar entries to text messages, contacts, call logs, and the apps you have installed. All this private information is then sent, unencrypted, to a separate server that analyzes the content of your phone.