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China To Deploy World's Largest People Tracking Network
hackingbear writes "News.com reports that China is building the largest and most sophisticated people-tracking network in the world, all to track citizens in the city of Shenzhen. This network utilizes 20,000 intelligent digital cameras and RFID cards to keep track of the 12.4 million people living in the Southern port city. The key to the system is the new residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips. 'Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.' While I lived in Shenzhen, there indeed were (and still are) plenty of crimes. One of my friend who lived at the 20th floor of a condo building in a nice neighborhood saw an intruder in the middle of one night while he was sleeping. Still, this will clearly raise the fear of human rights abuses. And ... 'one of the most startling aspects of this plan is that this project is mostly made possible by an American company with solid venture fundings.'"
They're getting social security cards. How nice.
Why bother. Why not inject an RFID implant in the arms off all citizens? I mean, if your going to be treated like cattle, why not go all the way?
Moo!
Life is not for the lazy.
I live in Germany and we still got democracy here, but who guaranties me that this will be like that forever? China's use of total surveillance should be a warning to us all, what can happen too us, too.
People always say: 'I have nothing to hide, so I am not against surveillance'. They don't realize that this might change.
Yet if this were done in NYC or London, there would be a string of posts condemning such action?
Frankly, wherever something like this happens, it's something to be wary of. Given China's track record I don't think there doing it just for the fun of it.
I heard this was implemented in 1984!
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
Equal access... yeah, great... bullies could find that nerdy kid instantly. Child molesters and stalkers wouldn't even have to leave the sofa to keep an eye on their prey. And of course, the wife will always know if you're *really* where you say you are.
this is just the test market
new york city and london will have it soon enough
"One of my friend who lived at the 20th floor of a condo building in a nice neighborhood saw an intruder in the middle of one night while he was sleeping." Something doesn't add up here.
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." - Orwell
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
The problem with NYC and London is that they inflate the privacy fears among the population, while simultaneously inflating the mad bomber fears among the population, and end up leaving the population with the worst of both worlds...
Spy cameras everywhere, lots of evidence for selective enforcement should that be convenient to anyone in power, but instead of having everyone looking out for each other with this newfound access to timely information, it's just collected and stored to be used as a weapon against individuals later.
The people who live in NYC and London should be demanding that all footage from those cameras be publicly accessible, instantly and indefinitely. They should be willing to kill for it if necessary, because they will be utterly ruled by it if they don't.
Stalin himself never had it so good.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
China's "one child" policy is about the only thing their government got right. Human overpopulation is the elephant in the room, and I actually applaud them for standing up and doing something to stop it there.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
1) Remove oponents. (Tick)
:).
2) Dumb down the population (remove the individual). (Tick)
3) Monitor & Track. (Tick)
4) Step 1.
5) Use data to make Step 2 more effective.
6) Step 3.
7) MIND CONTROL.
Now you and your friends live in luxury with 6 billion slaves at your dispense. What a warm fuzzy feeling
but what kind of infrastructure does
It doesn't take much people to monitor a system like this at all. Computers do most of the screening work to point out the small selection of people who deserve further manual investigation. The quality of the algorithms is becoming such that people will eventually not be required to intervene. The biggest problem is finding space for all the computers and data storage.
I don't think Americans would stand for it.
Americans will stand for anything. Somebody will tell them that it is a way of reducing petty crime, protecting the children, making paying for groceries easier, etc. Nowhere will it be mentioned that the entire reason for the system is to track your asses. The dumb cattle majority of people there (and around the world) will buy the lies hook, line and sinker. the masses will only work out that it's about tracking their asses when it's too late to do anything about it.
I drink to make other people interesting!
In NYC most of the cameras are private. The police aren't actively using these private cameras to monitor citizens. They don't have anywhere near the manpower to make this possible even if they wanted to. Camera footage is typically only viewed by the police if it happened to catch a crime.
That's not to say we won't have a problem in the future. But as of right now I'm not too worried about it in NYC.
Developers: We can use your help.
god i'm sick of this bullshit. seriously, stop trying to blame the white man for EVERYTHING. this whole scheme is made possible by communist control freaks in china. they would make this happen with or without this company.
i mean come on, now it's america's fault when china does fucked up things? i'm not even american and even i'm sick of the retarded american bashing.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
China is deploying the worlds largest 'known' people tracking system. There are plenty of secret ones just as big already deployed.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
That's easy: total surveillance, because it allows the people who control it to get away with crimes and frame those who they fear. Once a system is believed to be perfect proof of anything, those who can edit it become all powerful.
Every law we have to restrain or control the police or government was enacted for a reason, and that reason was abuse of powers by police and governments. Laws like that don't just fall out of trees.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
What hypocrisy? If you try really hard, you'll hear multiple sides of a lot issues thrown around. Unless we finally get all the way to enforced groupthink, my neighbor doing something I speak out against doesn't make either of us a hypocrite.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Please note, that while the UK has one of the worlds most comprehensive use of surveillance (especially in the London area) it has *NOT* reduced crime rates. That is a simple statistical fact.
I think surveillance creates a sense of false security for many less-informed people. So they demand more surveillance. The government is only happy to provide it. So are the companies contracted to implement the necessary technology. That is why the use of surveillance is increasing - even though there is clear proof it does not prevent crime (or terrorism for that matter!).
I think the "Dispair inc" poster with the group or parachuters says it all: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups". We did. Cameras on every corner and multiple RFIDs on every citizen appears to be the result.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Keeping track of 'minor purchases'?? Whose business is it that I buy a pack of cigarettes or some condoms or whatever? Why is the government so interested in this petty stuff unless it intends to use this info against me someday? Why does the government have cause to know who I hang with, who I sleep with?
How long until cards like this are used to replace hard currency in order to 'fine tune' the economy and strip the last vestiges of privacy? How long until having legal tender in your possession is considered a crime because 'only terrorists have untracable cash'?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
While this is scary, use of computers in everyday life necessarily equals loss of privacy as everything you do can be automatically scanned for patterns, archived indefinitely and disclosed to 3rd parties. If we don't want to be under constant surveillance, we as geeks should abandon our jobs and insist that critical functions in our society are performed by direct interaction between humans who, unlike computers, can be taught discretion.
With RFID chips already embedded in your Passport and the ability of the Authorities to locate your cell through triangulation, the potential already exists here.
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
Why go through all that trouble?
Store it on the SIM card of the citizens cellphone and remove the OFF switch from the phone (force companies to only manufacture/import cellphones without OFF switches). Make the phone send an SMS to the nearest police station with the text "ARREST ME PLS" if the users neglects to charge it.
In that way, the existing cellphone network can be extended to tracking all citizens 24/7 using their SIM and EMEI id's (no need for upgrades anywhere except logfile data storage), no matter where they go. It even works without setting up new RFID scanners and without buying fancy new tech from contracting companies.
How many places do you think such a system is already in place? Do you always carry your cellphone with your without thinking about it? Do you ever turn it off?
(Hint: several hundred western cities in both the US and EU have near-similar systems for "polulation movement research" which they claim only saves anonymous data. Yeah right!)
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Wow, that's nothing like Australia, Britain or the US at all. Corporations and governments treat us not as ignorant, illiterate simpletons but as ignorant, illiterate simpletons with short memories. It's hard to believe we have it so good.
Indeed...
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
This has happened in the US, in New Orleans and a few other places. It seems to be quite good at reducing crime, with murder rates down 57% and auto thefts down 30%.
The scary thing here isn't the video cameras, it's the RFID tags. No car thief is going to carry an ID to let themselves be tracked. This is to track the citizens, see what they are doing; to know what their patterns are, to determine if they are subversive. What other purpose can there be?
Qxe4
"China to Deploy World's Largest People Tracking Network"
- We can now avoid embarrasing mistakes, like calling Greenpeace to help remove a "beached whale" that's just a "Large Person" sunbathing
- They take up too much space in checkout aisles - if we can track them, we'll know when its safe to shop
- You want to track which "all-you-can-eat" they're hanging out at tonight - so you can avoid it
- Tracking them will avoid conflicts in lineups because "they smell funny"
- Once we track them, we can make sure they're wearing their backup alarms
- We can implement "no-fridge exclusionary zones" for their own good
- In an emergency, we can locate them quickly, and line them up to use them as a defensive shield against, say asteroids
- Knowing their history, we can avoid buying cars they once owned, with their associated suspension and steering problems
- We can enhance safety by making sure that any elevator refuses to take on more than one "Huge Person"
- Instead of charging everyone more for junk food, we can only tax "Huge People"
Go, China!Surveillance isn't like a debt that can be cancelled out by the other side paying it too - if both sides are under surveillance, both sides LOSE.
Surely you jest. The Chinese secret police will not be giving civilians raw access to the data. It's surveillance, not equivalence. They are not going to share their information advantage.
Some people believe in a "Panopticon"-style world in which anyone may watch anyone else - the future of privacy. I've seen several posts on that topic here. But it's a utopian dream, as impractical as Communism. It is inevitable that the upper ranks of society will obtain privacy for themselves. You might be able to spy on your neighbours, but you won't be spying on the police, the President, or the local mob. Like Marxism, the idea looks good on paper, but will lead to total disaster whenever it is implemented.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
If you don't want fans or critics then don't use an account. Although don't expect everyone to blindly accept your theories as fact without any evidence that you always avoid providing.The population has as much control as it allows itself to. There are ways to fix the problems you regularly complain about. You refuse to do so and continue ranting on Slashdot which does nothing to help anyones situation.This old unsupported claim again? Get some new material.Yeah, right. You're homeless. You're the traditional rock bottom of the class. Yet here you are posting on Slashdot and accessing the internet. Getting free meals each day. Living in a sanitary environment. Try to pull this 'homeless', 'I'm opressed', 'I'm the victim' bullshit in anywhere besides North America or Europe and you'd be dead in a month. The U.S. has its problems. Allowing idiots like you to leach off society is one of them.You continue saying one thing and doing another. The problem is your ego. You refuse to accept anything that is "below you". You fail to realize you really aren't the God king you seem to convince yourself you are. You aren't any greater than the average citizen.
The mods are buying this shit, once again. Thanks for helping to decrease the already low signal to noise ratio we have here.
Seems there's a catch 22 with these sorts of things. I don't exactly like China's government and whatever, but I think every government faces something similar to this: which is worse, crime or total surveillance?
That argument would need that surveilance actually reduces crime. There are by now several british studies showing that it may not actually do so. It may not even shift crime to an other area. In addition there are other, proven methods to reduce crime. One is improvement of living conditions.
There is however one thing that a surveilance state is very good at: Supressing political dissent. Political dissent needs leaders. These can be identified bu such a handy system and then be eleminated. It is quite obvious to me that this is the main motivation for such a system.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm not criticising the US in any way, nor does the article. Should China be held accountable for the oppression of its people? By all means yes. It is a terrible tragedy what is happening to political and religious dissidents in that country, and as a Chinese I feel a great deal of empathy towards the people who endure that regime (which, thankfully, I'm out of).
So while criticism of China's policies should rightfully be directed at China, companies from any other country complicit in the government's crimes should also be held accountable for their actions. We need to send the message to corporations everywhere (USA or otherwise) that participating actively in an oppressive, totalitarian regime is unacceptable, and will result in real consequences from those countries that actually care about human rights.
If someone would compile a list of these companies, I will gladly stop using their products in boycott, but as this article reveals, some of these culprits are not who we would expect normally.
This has nothing to do with America, this has everything to do with businessmen who legimitize the oppression of 1.3 billion people to make a quick buck. They disgust me, and IMHO they should be punished for such an inhuman lack of morality.
They will have to have some really cutting-edge data mining stuff to get this to work well as a subversive citizen finder... it would be fascinating if it weren't so chilling.
Still, I bet that it ultimately just gets used to undermine people who've made an enemy within the political organization that have access to this information.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
But for the most part, tracking ethnicity is a spectacularly bad idea, and tracking religion is not only worse but also much less reliable because it's not a constant. Ignore the questions of whether your mom thinks you're still a good Catholic and can look up whether you've shown up at Mass lately or see that you visited the Zendo down the street or guess about that party on Solstice (or, ahem, May Day) where most of your friends are pagans... (and at least the database won't let your mom see whether you're gay, probably because in China that's Just Not Talked About.)
Ethnic cleansing is a lot easier if you've got a database saying where all the members of Ethnic Group X live in your town*. And if you don't want to hire Jews, you've got a database that says who they are. And it's much easier to get the no-fly list right when you can tell if somebody named Malik Muhammed is African-American (ok, he's just one of Those People, and make sure to give him the kosher airline meal) or Arab (he goes on the list.) I'm sure China has their equivalent issues about which ethnicities get privileges and which don't, even outside of special provinces like Tibet.
And at least it's just China - in most of the Moslem countries, if you weren't born a Moslem, that's usually ok, though you might have to pay a tax, but if you were born a Moslem and you've converted to other religions, Sharia says you have to either convert back or die, and even in the more moderate countries like Egypt, they'll throw ex-Moslems in jail for preaching the wrong religion, as happened to friends-of-friends of mine back in the 80s. In some countries they've got Sunni-vs-Shia issues that are better off not having database support, and I don't know what happens if you convert to another branch of Islam such as Sufiism. And the Baha'i also seem to be a special always-infidel case.
* I get to mention the ethnic-cleansing-rounding-up-Ethnic-Group-X example without triggering Godwin's Law this time - one of the people at the party I was at last night was talking about how he didn't know two of his grandparents because they didn't make it back from the Japanese-American internment camps during the war (he wasn't doing a political rant - he was dealing with his aging mother's house, where there's still stuff of his other grandmother's as well.) One of the joys of living in California is the wide variety of people you get to be with - most of the examples I gave above are for people I've seen recently, though a few were people I hadn't seen in a while and one or two were from recent news.
* And the one person I've known who *was* a potential suicide bomber is presumably not on the no-fly list; he was a college student in Japan during the war, and was considering volunteering to be a kamikaze pilot, but one of his professors talked him out of it. I worked for him about 30 years ago - his war history didn't stop him from having a US security clearance. (Do I still get didn't-trigger-Godwin's-Law credit if I mention the tattoo his boss had on his arm? Probably not. )
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
doesnt sound too far fetched now...
There are only a few steps left to make this the mark of the beast. making all purchases possible on the card/chip and to implant the chip... and all that technology is already here...
Revelations 13:16-17
"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads, that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark..."
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Name: Anonymous Coward
Address: Mom's basement
Work History: Slashdotter, Blogmaster, Burgerflippermeister
Educational Background: Wikipedia
Religion: Jedi
Ethnicity: Nerd
Police Record: Uber 1337 h4xx0r
Medical Insurance Status: Morbid obesity
Landlords Phone Number: Mom
Personal Reproductive History: NULL
We are pretty close ... closer than you think.
;-)
Consider jumping to this post:
Re:Why go through all that trouble?.
There is a good explanation there
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
[ This post is a Public Service Announcement ]
- - NOTE: Stevie is not representative of homeless people in general. For example, the fastest growing group of homeless people are women and children in dire straits, whose homelessness is caused by such events as seeking refuge from an abusive relative, death of a spouse, job loss, or illness. The comments below are specific to Stevie, not homeless people in general.
Stevie blathered:
Why not do something radical, like get a job? Oh, right ... you said you won't take a job except for one that meets your conditions. It has to be in exactly the field you claim to be so good in (though if you're that good, why don't you have a job?), at the pay you think you're worth, with the working conditions you think you deserve, that its the employers' responsibility to "give you a leg up", and that anything else is "dishonest."
Those are your words.
Take some meds, get a haircut, and start applying for a job more in line with your real qualifications, not your inflated delusion of self-worth.
The job rules are simple:
The other rules are also simple:
You're your own worst enemy. You keep complaining, but you post here under multiple accounts, whine, whine, whine about how unfair employers are and how they owe you a job with specific conditions and pay because that's what you went to school for. Grow up - because with your crap attitude, you're not even qualified for a "do you want fries with that" McJob.
You say you don't want to go into any of the programs available for the homeless because you "don't want to be stereotyped with the alcoholics and the druggies". How is anyone who thinks they're "too good" any better? You're actually worse - they at least admit they have a problem, and aren't too full of false self-pride to take advantage of an opportunity for some help.
A lot of people end up homeless due to misfortune, divorce, job loss, medical bills, addictions, bad decisions, whatever. This doesn't make them "bad people" - but your claim that you don't want to be "stereotyped" as "one of them" shows how you think yourself so much better.
Stop thinking you're better than people who had the guts to take jobs that you would consider "beneath you." You're not. You can't even troll properly, FFS.
And stop complaining about anyone stalking you; remember how you pulled this BS a couple of weeks ago ... if anyone was stalking, it was you, and this isn't the first time you've pulled this crap on someone. You're a hypocritical dickhead.
[ This has been a public service announcement. Thank you for your patience ]
And in related news, UK government officials admitted they were green with envy over China's plans. "We are falling behind the police state curve!" cried out the Minister of Justice.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The Transparent Society.
In a few years people are going to be taking advantage of Google's storage to upload everything pretty close to 24/7 from their phonecam to broadcast on Google's video servers, and you'll be be able to mashup this with Google maps street level and redirect it to your VR-of-choice and it'll be just like being there (if you look past the lag and compression artifacts), except with a rewind button.
I can think of worse guardians of the transparent society.
When it's embedded in your brain, then you can brag.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I feel the best use of it would be the surveillance of our protectors and elected officials while on duty. It will never happen of course, but it should. Fuck, our vice president seems to think that the number of state secrets he is keeping is a state secret. Top level government officials should not have any form of privacy that cannot be audited. It's not that we don't believe that they're honest folks. "trust, but verify", that's one of many conservative parenting ethos, is it not?
"It will never happen here..." he said. "If someone ever did begin to develop it, the cry of 'MARK OF THE BEAST' from the Christian Right (US and abroad) would be so stigmatizing* that this whole '666' thing would become a self UN-filfilling prophecy." Ok, so where is it? If this is not precisely what all the wacko Christian right idiots (like me) have been saying all along... chips in the hand (The card is a courtesy), tracking, surveillance... If this is not it, what is? And if so, where is the hew and cry from the Christians. Or are they (ok, ok... we) just sitting back, shaking our heads saying... "We told you so..."
And what if this works? What if no "Beast" arises from the sea? What if this is really a good idea and they benefit and no evil Neo-Mao rises to enslave them? THEN what is to stop it from happening here? Anybody??? If "U.S. companies like IBM, Cisco, H.P., Dell**" are in on this, what is to stop it from happening "here"?
*He didn't realize the pun he unleashed here
**Say, we're missing a OS company in this list. Any volunteers?
As I recall it (but please note that I am not 100% certain) it has not.
I seem to remember that a lot of the "lesser crimes" (such as traffic offenses etc.) are solved, while the more serious crimes (robbery, murder, grand theft auto, etc) are virtually unchanged - and in some areas significantly higher than before cameras were installed.
Criminals simply seem to adjust to the new rules of the game. While authorities are all but drowning in the sheer mass of information and video they are collecting.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...