Slashdot Mirror
China Approves Facial Recognition for Surveillance
user24 writes "Several sources are reporting that China has approved a facial recognition system to be used for ID purposes in surveillance and security. From the article: 'The system, approved by the Ministry of Public Security, is expected to be used at airports, customs entrances, banks, post offices, residential areas and other public places in the near future [...] 'It has a superior advantage compared with fingerprint identification because the country doesn't have a fingerprint database for the general public,' [...] However, the country's ID cards do feature the person's photograph, which could facilitate the creation of a facial database, said Su Guangda.'"
In my books, when anyone does it, it's bloody crazy.
Most people don't care about individual freedom, though. The government only ever fails individuals, not any sizable portion of the population. Unfortunately, most people don't really give a shit about something that they perceive can't happen to them.
Let me relate a story about how all governments are inefficient and incompetent, even police states. I have two friends who live in the US. They are Chinese born and are naturalized American citizens. So their passports have the same 'English' or PingYing name. They both live in the same area and work for NASA. When one goes back (to China), the other always has issues if he goes back within 2-3 months. That is because the system simply tracks them by name and area they are from. So the system sees a person from the US,- say DC,- returns to China and leaves, then comes back 2 weeks later, it is suspicious. It's even better if the other hasn't left, cause then they think the person left the country without going through an official checkpoint and is trying to re-enter (can you say 'spy'). Usually takes them 3-4 hours to straigten everything out... So even police states can't track everyone.
Wow, this is wrong on so many levels. Communism fails because people do it right -- not despite of it. Planned economies cannot work because those doing the planning are less invested in the success of their plan than those performing the work. And those performing the work naturally dull their ingenuity because they feel disenfranchised from power. The ingenuity is not gone completely, but it is dulled.
Plus innovation comes out of planning -- a process that more often than not involves weighing the possibilities of what is already possible. In a true capitalist economy progress comes out competing -- which is looking for yet not possible in order to get ahead of the competition. Obviously, this creates a much stronger impetus for progress.
This is why Monopolies and "public" companies are inherently inefficient as well. The monopolies are essentially planned economies and public companies separate the owners from the responsibilities of running their companies and thus there is very little fear of failure left in those companies. The guys at the top are too sure that they can always get a new job somewhere else or just retire on all those huge salaries they were making. If they had a sense of ownership of their companies, they be afraid to loose them and would be fighting dirty to inovate and stay ahead.
And the current success of China is due to the state taking hands off the planning. It's a madhouse in the business environment there. Enterprices have to completely fend for themselves. This creates impetus to move quickly to conquer new markets to make more money. Government taking its hands off is what drives the new Chinese economy.
As for power abuse, it is the natural function of power to be abused by the people who have it. The more "professional" politicians are, the more they are likely to abuse it. It makes sense because anyone who spends his entire life trying to get into the position of power wants to maximize his return-on-investment -- in this case the investment being his life-time of work trying to get into power. I am not saying that these people have not ends in mind other than personal power-grab, I am just outlying a natural tendency here.
Checks and balances are not a natural property of a capitalist society. They are a natural property of a democratic society. Hitler's Germany was a capitalist society. So is modern Iran. So is modern Russian (which is by no means democratic).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.