Earlier this month, security researcher Victor Gevers found and disclosed an exposed database live-tracking the locations of about 2.6 million residents of Xinjiang, China, offering a window into what a digital surveillance state looks like in the 21st century.

Xinjiang is China’s largest province, and home to China’s Uighurs, a Turkic minority group. Here, the Chinese government has implemented a testbed police state where an estimated 1 million individuals from these minority groups have been arbitrarily detained. Among the detainees are academics, writers, engineers, and relatives of Uighurs in exile. Many Uighurs abroad worry for their missing family members, who they haven’t heard from for several months and, in some cases, over a year.