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China to Have Over 100 Eyes in the Sky
gollum123 writes "Reuters reports China plans to launch more than 100 satellites before 2020 to watch every corner of the country, state-run China Central Television quoted a government official as saying Tuesday. A "large surveying network" would be set up to monitor water reserves, forests, farmland, city construction and "various activities of society," a government official said without elaborating. "The aim is that, at any time and any place, we can obtain necessary data on any event through watching the Earth from space," said Shao Liqin, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology."
A "large surveying network" would be set up to monitor water reserves, forests, farmland, city construction and "various activities of society," a government official said without elaborating.
good grief!
"various activities of society,"
translation anybody?
How ominous. Was this translated with editorializing in mind, or was this official so tactless as to expose the true purpose of such a constellation?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Insert obligatory 1984 reference here.
Yeah they are going to use them just to monitor China, uhuh.
I for one welcome our Chinese satellite overlords!
Just don't ever do anything wrong (by the standards of the people in power) and you'll be fine. What, me worry?
Vote Quimby!
What it does not say is what orbit these things will be in. Spy satelites normally are in polar orbit so they cover the whole earth as it rotates.
Putting these things in geostationary orbit so that they stay in the same place as the earth rotates is probably too high for this sort of thing.
Hence I guess that these things can spy on the rest of the world, not just China. Or am I missing something?
No more weather.
China legalises nude sun bathing. An official, quoted on condition of anonymity, said that studies have shown that Chinese women, especially those between the ages of 18 to 29 seem to suffer from low levels of vitamin D and are thus encouraged to sunbath... in the nude... on clear cloudless days...
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I doubt the White House will mention this. Even if they did condemn it, they will be secretly trying to figure out their own way of one-upping it (assuming they haven't already).
The Bush administration has done things like that in the past. Remember when Bush made his campaign promise to repeal Clinton's secret evidence laws, and instead increased them dramatically?
Attn. Hollywood: Now see what you made them do! Augh!
... but if they need that many satellites, it doesn't sound as if they'll be geo-stationary ... (*ominous stare, audience gasps in disbelief*). But of course, it's only fair since the US has been dong essentially the same thing for years (remember the personalized magazine cover story?).
/me crawls back under my rock. Oh, good ole rock. :o)
Good-bye privacy, I'm sure glad I'm not anywhere near China
And for the government-weary and/or paranoid readers: which would you rather:
(a) gov't plays peeping tom and keeps images sectret, or
(b) gov't puts up a web site with a free-for-all control panel so Yu can spy on Hee's neighbour('s daughter Wau-shees-nekkid).
"Good news, everyone!"
The US have spy satellites up. Europe wants spy satellites up. Don't complain if the Chinese want theirs up there too.
Set up huge techno-fire works on the satellites and do horizon wide shows of colours. Or not..
I wonder if you would be able to see them from the ground on a good night or would they be beyond the reach of the human eye?
_+_
translation anybody?
Preparing for the future.
Think Metropolis, Modern Times, 1984 (to me rather a remake of Jevgenij Samjatin), RFID+Neurochips.
Add remote control! Imagine!
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Things like this have been flying for decades.
I'd like to know what sort of sensors and resolutions will be flying and what they plan to charge for raw data.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
The rest of the world in 10, 9, 8, 7......
Its only a matter of time. I can without a doubt say this will be commonplace in the next decade or two. No tinfoil hat joke here, sorry.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
With a billion+ people I wouldn't be too worried about a mere 100 satellites. Get an umbrella if you are worried about satellites watching you.
You bet, they're going to be spy-sats.
Who has the power to, spies. US does it on a large scale, so does Russia, why wouldn't China.
This hardly qualifies as news, and doesn't surprise me whatsoever.
This makes a lot of sense for China. It is a vast country after all that is hard to monitor. Not only a lot of infrastructur is missing, but also the local authorities have a really bad tendency to cover up any problems including large scale environmental disasters. That is one of the problems with authorian rule. So being able to monitor the provinces from Beijing gives them a lot of control.
Do You really think China has now the technology to monitor people from the sky? I doubt even the US has this. But who am I kidding? This is Slashdot of all places so I better get my tinfoil hat to blend in with the crowd.
And I always thought it was the Japanese who liked taking pictures...
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
So I guess all the interesting events in China happen outside?
All together now: C'est la vie! One man cannot summon the future, et al. As you were, "deny and foresake your fundamental principles and values" mode ON! Full steam ahead into oblivion!
http://service.china.org.cn/link/wcm/Show_Text?inf o_id=112464
Highlights:
Sun Laiyan, director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said that a large satellite-based earth observation system will also be built by 2010. The system could be used for observation of land, atmosphere and ocean within China, its adjacent areas and even the entire globe.
Sun said that China will develop a new generation of polar orbit and stationary orbit meteorological satellites, high-performance resource follow-up satellites, oceanic color and dynamic observation satellites.
All rites reversed 2010
...these should be fitted with giant flash guns so we know when they are taking our photograph.
This comment is especially striking considering that the real effect of the great wall was not realy to keep the raiding parties out (you would have needed an awfull lot of guards for that) but rather to make it harder for them to retreat after a succefull strike - thus removing the incentative for raiding parties. So, this truly could be considered a modern version of the great wall - making it harder for people to escape
The other issue at hand here is cost: the average life span of a spy satellite is about 3.5 or 4 years. The optics start to fog over due to radiation from the sun, and on something as precise as a spy satellite, that's a big deal.
I think this is an excellent point. Exactly what is going to be the total cost of this plan? It sounds like it would be, no pun intended, astronomical.
I would venture to guess that rather than putting 100 satellites up they put a few up and tell the people that they have 100. How are they going to know different anyway?
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
There are lots of "activities of society" that don't require a tin-foil hat, you know.
E.g., traffic congestions. If you can see those from the sattellite, you have a head start in telling people to take other routes.
E.g., fires. If in the middle of a forrested area you see a big bright infrared spot, you can react before the fire wiped out several square kilometres. And you'd be surprised how many forest fires are due to "activities of society". (A.k.a., idiot tourists.)
Even if it is China and the mandatory knee jerk reaction is "chinese govt==evil", it's actually easier for them too to watch for such _big_ things, than to try to track an individual dissident by sattellite. If they want to track an individual person, they can just send an agent. It's cheaper and doesn't lose track each time the target goes into a house or bus.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Europe wants spy satellites up.
. That makes them uniqe. Of course monitoring "various activities of society" can cover anything from something as innocent as traffic control to spying on the private citizen. Even so, judging from the limited information in this story, these plans look more like a rather innocent survey/management network than a 1984-esque Orwellian spy apparatus.
AFAIK some European countries already have spy satilites up, first among them Russia. What makes the Chinese ones special is that they will not be for spying on the Europeans, Americans, Australians or Africans. Nor are they intended to keep an eye on the Middle east. They will be a instrument with 100% coverage of Chinese national territory for the Chinese govt. to use for monitoring the Chinese
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
They plan to own the whole planet by then.
'All your base are belong ...'
sigs, as if you care.
Time to build the Great Tin Foil Hat of China!
Brand new game, guess the name of the new Chinese Echelon! I think that now with NRAO equivalent, the chinese will have fun with this spying technology.
...) and Europe has too.
Just to reply to one comment, US do have spy planes (Key Hole 11, 12,
I get it!!!!! Yes!!!!! This is a good day to be alive.
It is a joke on English!!!!!!! The parent said "time to make reference of 1984!!!" but was referring to book by GEORGE ORWELL; the humor of English lies within tragic misinterpretation!!!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! I am laughing at your misinterpretation of his words to mean 1980's era of time!!!!! This is funny!!!!!!!
You are great comedian!!!!
They make no bones about it.
Wasn't it in Deus Ex somewhere they talked about the difference between governments being that some are openly controlling and others leave freedom to the people, thereby allowing the corporations, etc. to take power?
Of course, I am not suggesting that you take dictation on philosophy of rule from a video game, simply that China is a very different social climate than we are used to and that there are undoubtedly many advantages and disadvantages to any system...
In fact, present circumstances bearing heavily here, I for one am more and more interested in alternatives.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
I'm quite sure they meant the Ministry of Love. They're the ones that handle such public social issues.
I don't get it.
I take it the Ministry of Science and Technology is a subdivision of the Ministry of Peace.
Here is a little more information.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
How will 100 satellites be able to image China at one time? Low altitude US surveillance satellites only get global coverage once per day.
an ill wind that blows no good
Ah, there's irony for you, huh? You're happy to talk about China's shortcomings but not those of your own nation, the one that's supposedly "the land of the free".
Look, I don't live in a utopian society where everything is perfect - nobody does - but I think you have to at least acknowledge that, if your an American, measuring your freedoms against those of China (or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Wherever You Want To Invade Today (TM)), rather than against, say, your own Constitution is a sad state of affairs.
When you start accepting the small injustices and intolerances, even the ones that don't affect you, then you've let the door open a little bit. From there on, opening it wider and wider becomes easier than you think.
Freedom isn't the freedom to say just the popular things, it's the freedom to say the most unpopular stuff, even the stuff that makes 99 percent of people want to puke. Start oppressing one person's rights and you've oppressed everyone's.
Bottom line: if you're the land of the free then be the land of the free, not the land of the mostly free.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This will make is so much easier to play Sim-China!
Interesting. China is often seen as being the secretive control-obsessed state, yet America has had this capability for years, and the Chinese are only getting it now AND they are being open about their intentions.
s/geosyncronous/geosynchronous.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
Who says that Chinese satellite technology can't monitor individuals? If the resolution from geosynchronous orbit is insufficient, they can just move the satellites closer. I'd say this distance should be sufficient.
Well, now I know why we are weaponizing space. I guess the 1980s Starwars program is back into action.
...China to invade Taiwan. ...N. Korea invades S. Korea and sells fissionable material to the black market. ...Iran to support the destruction of Israel through their nuclear program. ...Japan ramping up their Navy and pacifism in order to stave off island disputes with China. ...Europe is having an internal problem with anti-semitism ...America with our internal political cultural divide. ...Russia is weary of a corrupted USA with advanced weaponry. Thus, they are boosting its ICBM technology.
This doesn't surprise me with all the global conflict. Now that the US is busy with terrorism, the rest of the world is finally left unchecked and free to be bold. Thus, would be a good strategic time for counties such as...
Sounds like the global chessboard is in motion again folks. We might be on the cusp (if not already) into WW3.
Life is not for the lazy.
Supposedly, at least one satellite (NASA, IIRC) has already been "moved out of orbit" by hacker group cDC (Cult of the Dead Cow).
;-)
Google, Wikipedia, and the other usual suspects are a little light on corroboration though, so I suppose it depends on whether you take (self-admitted fibbers, wind-up merchants and media whores) cDc's word for it...
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Geosynchronous Orbit
...We have camera's on the ground (lots and lots of them)
I live in the UK.
China sure is wasting alot of money for a developing country.
What you may not be aware of is that people in Asia don't have the same kind of interest in politics as they do in America.
In Singapore, yes - anti-government sentiments are quickly and harshly dealt with. But what if I wanted to talk about arts and culture? About science? To talk with your friends? No laws prevent that. If you asked most people in Singapore if they feel repressed by the government, the general answer is no. Few have a passion for politics.
I think it's the same way in China. Extreme repression of speech? They can communicate with friends and family, and for most people, it's enough.
It's not that I wouldn't like China to open up. I hope it does. I hope young male China nationals get to wank to porn sites, that young male China nationals get to read BBC online.
But the sad thing is that whoever is in control of the government - the people or the officials - they are first and foremost humans, and that means selfishness, power greed and vice.
The sad thing is that when people have a chance to use their freedoms, like those in the United States, they use it to repress the rights of their fellow citizens just based on their religious convictions - like a ban of abortion and gay marriage, to put God into the Pledge of Allegiance, among other things.
I don't think the United States is inherently a free-er country in that sense. Damned if the people do and damned if the people don't have political power.
My spacefaring friends, the parking lot is getting rather full. Good luck finding room for them up there.
The only problem with the "watching for people gathering in Tiananmen Square" theory is that such squares are already in the middle of cities, and patrolled by police. China _is_ a police state. Don't assume that communist police was like, say, German police, which you only see about once per month. Communist governments have police and informants all over the place.
So they don't really need a satellite to tell them that. A cop will relay that information quicker.
More importantly, a cop has a brain and can filter data easier than a computer can. A cop can tell if it's a demonstration shouting anti-communist slogans, or merely a crowded day with everyone going around their business.
An orbital camera only sees a crowd in both cases. Even if you program it to only react at over a certain crowd size, a cop could still have informed you faster, while the crowd was still forming.
That said, I'm sure they'd _love_ to be able to track everyone by satellite. In fact, if the press release is indeed worded like that, it can well be that someone actually _wanted_ to give the population the idea "we could mean watching _you_."
I'm just saying it's not practical.
1. Tracking people from above, seeing only the top of their head, isn't of as much use as the tinfoil hat crowd seems to assume. Half the office building I work in would look just the same from above: a mess of hair anywhere between blond and brown, on top of some black clothes. Good luck telling it's me, and not some guy from the second floor.
And let's remember that currently software has trouble even recognizing a face in a clear photo. Recognizing someone by their haircut from above is just SF.
2. It loses track as soon as you enter a building, car, bus, train, or subway. If I enter a subway station, I could come out _anywhere_. Just supervising all possible exits to see me come out, is gonna take half of those 100 satellites. Just for one person.
3. It becomes useless on any cloudy or foggy day.
Needless to say, a human agent has none of these 3 problems.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It will form one giant super robot!
"If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a hand gun" - Dan Rather
At China's wanton development rate, everything will be denuded desert or urban concrete by 2020. Sort of like looking at the surface of the Moon or Mars.
(Remember the USA cut down 90% of its ocean-to-ocean forests in the 18th and 19th century. Some of that came back during the 20th.)
A minor nitpick--Russia is part of Asia, not Europe.
Only Trans-Ural Russia qualifies as being in Asia. The rest of it is in Europe. So it depends on your point of view how you want to classify the Russians. Being a European myself, I tend to count Russians as fellow Europeans.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
It is just another means of Social Control, maintaining order, watch nude sunbathers, etc.
The more you watch your Society the better you are at controlling them. Any growing dissidents can be spotted and pacified before it gets out of hand.
To an outsider it would seem the Government is a little paranoid but remember not long ago areas in China was control by war lords & organized crime (and lots of internal fighting in the vie for local power). Most of the aging leadership lived through the unification of China. Organized crime is still present in China a very real treat to local government. They must feel that the only way to maintain unity is to enforce it by any means at their disposal. Maybe they fear a radical General might break away from the hard line and try to seize power in some area of China.
If you study China's history you begin to see why this system of controls is acceptable to the ruling powers. It might not be the best way but the risk of trying something new might result a revolution that would kill millions.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Hate to say it, but would any country really spend that much money in building a satellite network capable of watching its own country? That is a ridiculously mundane use for a multibillion dollar system. Look at the statistics of spending--defense systems are what most countries spend most of their money on.
Cut through the outrageous cover story, it's a spy satellite network. Why should it necessarily be optical either? Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology has been around for years.
I can't believe so many of you were fooled.
Nitpickers should spell check...
How much are they going to cost?
Even if it is China and the mandatory knee jerk reaction is "chinese govt==evil"
I'm sorry, but I missed something. Is there some other more apt reaction to a government with a long, bloody track record of torturing, killing and suppressing its people in the name of ideology?
I don't understand the people that come out of the woodwork as apologists for the Chinese government here. The Chinese government IS EVIL and that knee-jerk reaction isn't a "knee-jerk" reaction, it's as simple and logical a reaction to the totalitarian brutality they've demonstrates as the "knee-jerk" reaction to Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, ad nauseum.
Anyone remember the spy plane that crashed there some years back? The one they didn't want to give back to us? I wonder if any of the optics technology used in these satellites came from that?
For more info. on plane crash, Google: "us spy plane crashes china"
if I could find a reference to it anywhere.
It is hard to imagine any orbit that could let any of those satellites spend much of its time over China. So presumably these satellites are for exactly the same kind of spying that other governments use their satellites for.
I could be wrong--but don't bet on it until we see Chinese-based websites selling the information publically like Keyhole does. I will believe that when I see it.
That said, one has to admit that China has the same right as any other nation, to put up spy/ observation satellites. They just differ by being the only ones to publically pretend their primary objective is civillian.
I guess there is one other way to understand the announcement: they are backhandedly mimicking the American globocop claim, by saying that the whole earth is their territory to monitor. That is rather more egregious--and yet still no worse than some other countries!
I do tend to believe there are objective differences between Chinese and American society. For one, I always ask my Chinese friends who their equivalent to Michael Moore is...
On the other hand, one thing that is NOT a difference between China and America, is this: In both countries a large but incomplete majority is convinced they are freer, righter, and better informed than the citizens of the other country. Grok that.
[There is *very* little public understanding of others' mindset across *any* language boundary, anywhere in the world.]
A perfect opportunity to moon the satellites overhead!
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
You should move to China to get out from under the repressive Bush control of your life. I'm sure your being tracked as we speak. In fact I'll bet the Bush Administration knows about the big toenail fetish photos on your computer. Its just a matter of time before they bust in and distroy your pathetic life. Go now to a free country like China, France, Canada, or Liberia.
Someone sez:
With a resolution of 5cm (2 inches)
or 10cm (4 inches), the spy satellites
can certainly track people.
You responded
That's the resolution for a top-of-the-line
KH-12 Keyhole-class satellite operated by the
United States, which cost approximately $1
billion each. Even if the Chinese had the
technical ability to produce such a thing,
which they haven't even come close to
demonstrating, they barely have the resources
to put up one such satellite, let alone 100.
And added:
Realistically, it's far more likely that in
order to create such a network, the resolving
power they'll wind up with will be comparable
to western commercial satellites, on the order
of 1-10 meters at best.
I am interested in learning how you know that the Chinese, quote:
"barely have the resources to put up
one such satellite, let alone 100."
and
"it's far more likely that in order to
create such a network, the resolving
power they'll wind up with will be
comparable to western commercial
satellites, on the order of 1-10 meters at
best."
Would you kindly show us the proof that you have to back up what you have just stated ?
Or are you knowing something none of us ever heard of ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Thank you for serving in our military. I'm especially encouraged that the naysayers (who, although well-publicized, are in the MINORITY in this country) aren't getting you down. These people, as well as most on Slashdot, are too shortsighted to see the "profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest".
This is very obviously a tool that could be utilized to suppress dissent, perhaps it has to do with the riots and spontaneous insurrections that have been occuring in China as of late. Like the tollbooth riots that occured recently. Just think if they could rewind their tape and then rewatch the incident and pick out who did what when. The problem of government surveillance is obviously not limited to China but indicative of a very negative direction the widespread dissemination of information technology, the subject is a reference to the last chapter of SmartMobs.
The US spys on on China.
Now China spys on China.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well, everyone except these
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Article doesn't state what orbit the satellites will be in... if not geosynchronous, they may be watching you too.
Now you know why I always carry an umbrella with a picture of Wen Jiabao painted on the top.
Naturally, such a system will be turned off when leaving Chinese territory, because they really only want to monitor their won society.... Brett
I don't see a single "All Your Base Are..." joke. What is happening to this younger generation of slashdotters?
Table-ized A.I.
At least they tell everyone (everyone not in China). I like their bluntness.
In A.D. 2004 War was beginning. USA: What happen ? Mechanic: Somebody got our satellites. USA: We lost signal. USA: What ! USA: Main screen turned off. USA: Damn !! China: How are you gentlemen !! China: All your satelite are belong to us. China: You are on the way to destruction. USA: What you say !! China: You have no chance to survive make your time. China: HA HA HA HA ....
I never say that I am bright, and when I asked that stupid and ignorant question, I have proven to all that I am indeed a dimbulb.
But anyway, many thanks for the detail explaination.
Thanks again !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Unless you are an anti-war protester who lives in Iraq, of course, in which case a GI will quietly place a bullet in your head..