Slashdot Mirror
China's All-Seeing Eye
Greg Walton brings us a lengthy story from Rolling Stone which describes China's comprehensive surveillance project, dubbed Golden Shield. The 'Great Firewall of China,' which we've discussed in the past, is but one aspect of Golden Shield. It also includes national ID cards, CCTV networks, and face-recognition software. This investigation showcases just how massive an undertaking it truly is. When finished, it will dwarf London's surveillance system. Quoting:
"Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range -- a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.) ... This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces."
Without a doubt, a face-recognition software in China is an incredible hi tech piece of software.
I guess Google Street China will not have to go to the trouble of blurring faces :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The Brits are going to have to get serious if they want to compete on canine hygiene enforcement.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Well, they were going to call it Golden Eye, but that was already taken.
Actually, in this case they are the one and the same.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/