New Chinese data law creates more headaches for ship trackers in 2022 | NK PRO - NK News
The law creates a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card for smugglers that hide AIS data, one expert said
With Pyongyang’s illicit fuel trade seemingly on pace to recover in 2022, experts say a recently-enacted Chinese privacy law will handicap international efforts to keep tabs on Kim Jong Un’s web of illicit procurement networks.
In Nov. 2021, China enacted the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), introducing a swath of regulations for “sensitive personal information” leaving the country.
“No organization or individual may illegally collect, use, process, or transmit other people’s personal information, or illegally trade, provide, or disclose other people’s personal information, or engage in the processing of personal information that endangers the national security or public interests,” Article 10 of the PIPL states.
Companies that violate the law and don’t offer “rectification” can be fined nearly $7.8 million (50 million Chinese yuan).
Although the law contains no explicit references to ship location data, uncertainty over how Chinese courts will interpret the law and the prospect of immense fines has led many Chinese AIS providers to simply stop selling data to foreign companies.
In practice, this has resulted in a notable drop-off of AIS data in certain Chinese waters: FleetMon, a German ship tracking firm, shows terrestrial AIS coverage in the Bohai Sea practically disappearing between Nov. 6 and Nov. 8, 2021.
A spokesperson for MarineTraffic, a specialized ship tracking platform, told NK Pro in an email there had been some loss of terrestrial AIS data, but that the company still had a “full picture of activity in China” thanks to AIS-equipped satellites. Still, many ship tracking services — including MarineTraffic — charge more for satellite data than terrestrial data.
Neil Watts, a sanctions expert for Compliance and Capacity Skills International and former member of the PoE, said decreased AIS data could hamper international efforts to keep tabs on North Korea’s illicit supply networks.
“You can get a satellite image of what’s going on in the Ningbo-Zhoushan area where [the Chinese and North Koreans] are doing the ship-to-ship transfers in Chinese waters,” he said. “[But] now you can’t identify the ship you see in satellite imagery with the real ship [via AIS].”
This makes it more difficult to prove that illicit activity is taking place in Chinese waters, he added.
Aside from making it more difficult to track suspicious vessel movements, a lack of AIS data creates an additional headache for shipping companies looking to ensure their vessels follow hyper-optimized routes.
But AIS data from Chinese ground stations are just one of several tools for tracking illicit activity. Some satellites are equipped with AIS receivers that allow for tracking ships far from land, albeit at a lower frequency and with lower precision in densely-populated ports.
And as the Chinese law only applies to Chinese nationals, ground stations in South Korea, Taiwan and other countries in the region still provide ship tracking companies with real-time AIS data.
“Some trace of information is always there,” Katsu Furukawa, a former member of the U.N. PoE and maritime expert, told NK Pro. For instance, he pointed out that ships passing through high-traffic areas — as vessels sailing from Chongjin to Ningbo-Zhoushan must do when they sail through the Korean Strait — are essentially forced to activate their AIS transponders to avoid colliding with other vessels.
“The point is to still keep an eye on the known sanction evaders — they constitute the core of illegal activities,” he added.
While Furukawa suggested that non-Chinese firms could also require merchant vessels to submit AIS records when arriving in port, effectively recovering AIS data that would have gone through domestic Chinese providers, Watts cautioned that it isn’t that simple.
“The philosophy thus far has been that a ship’s captain will have to explain why a ship has an AIS blackout, but now they have a legitimate reason due to these new Chinese laws,” he explained.”
“So it’s sort of a ‘get-out-of jail-free card,’ as it were, for these illicit traders.”
Edited by Arius Derr
source: https://www.nknews.org/pro/new-chinese-data-law-creates-more-headaches-for-ship-trackers-in-2022/
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