A Nov. 19 report by advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW), which refers to the presentation, looks at one of the most ambitious systems being set up thanks to personal information linked to government-issued IDs. Called “Police Cloud,” it appears to be a project of the Ministry of Public Security, which issued a regulation in 2015 aimed at enhancing nation-wide information sharing through provincial-level police cloud-computing centers (link in Chinese).

These databases can scoop up everything from addresses, to medical history, supermarket membership, and delivery records. Data analytics and cloud computing allow security bureau authorities to then look for patterns in personal data far more efficiently than was possible even a few years ago, and make predictions. The ministry couldn’t be reached out for comment.