The Chinese government, according to the HRW, has stored citizens' information for years, and is now exploring new technologies to gather persol information more efficiently, and to share it across departments at both the tiol and local levels. Various applications used to alyse texts, videos and security camera images in real time or near real time are aimed at suppressing crimes, however, the HRW said these methods also allow police to arbitrarily obtain information about ordiry people.