Adversary Intelligence — 2026-08-05

Exposed Chinese Police Dashboard Tracked 700+ Foreign Residents Using Facial Recognition, Medical Records, and Travel Data

BLUFZhangjiakou's exposed platform confirms Chinese municipal police maintain fused biometric and travel dossiers on foreign nationals, including journalists, sourced from watchlists that operate independent of physical presence.

Cybersecurity researcher Marc Hofer, a former foreign correspondent based in Amsterdam, identified an exposed online dashboard called the "Dynamic Control Platform for Overseas Personnel" tracking foreigners in Zhangjiakou, the northern Chinese city that co-hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics, according to the New York Times 1. The dashboard listed more than 700 foreign residents of the city and contained nearly 12,000 entries in total, including fugitives, individuals from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and more than 300 foreign journalists, some of whom had not visited Zhangjiakou 12. Hofer found the unsecured system in January 2026; the Times reported it was apparently built for the Zhangjiakou Public Security Bureau and was taken offline in May 1. The platform aggregated surveillance-camera footage, medical records, utility bills, flight and train seat numbers, and facial-recognition photos from a local ski resort, and the Times found links between the platform and Origin Dynamic, a Beijing company that supplies robotics and surveillance equipment to police through public tenders 1.

Analysis
The system's inclusion of journalists who never visited Zhangjiakou indicates it ingests pre-compiled watchlists rather than tracking only observed movement, extending its reach beyond physical presence and pointing to an institutionalized monitoring apparatus rather than an isolated experiment. The operating agency and collection methods remain undisclosed, leaving the platform's chain of authority and any data-sharing ties to national security services unresolved and complicating outside attribution. Sourcing rests on a single New York Times account, with other outlets republishing its findings rather than independently verifying them. The dashboard may instead be a pilot or demonstration system stitched from disparate government databases rather than an operational real-time tracker, a reading consistent with entries for people who never entered the city.

3 sources

How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners - The New York Times
How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners - OODA Loop
How China keeps tabs on foreigners - ChinaTechNews