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."
Is it just me or is this amazingly scary? Every line of that article I just kept thinking 1984, 1984, 1984. Horrible. U.S. companies should be banned from supplying any security tech to China, ever. It's disgusting that companies don't give a rat's arse about their principals, only the almighty buck.
China: "Hello, we are looking to enslave and repress our people, do you have the technology?"
U.S. Money Grubbing Scumbags: "Right this way sir!"
We are selling out our own democracy and it sickens me. It's enough to make me want to be a Republican.
This is China: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks_releases_over_150_censored_videos_and_photos_of_the_Tibet_uprising
I hope I am not alive in a world where they are supreme.
From 1984:
"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committedâ"would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paperâ"the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." â"pg 19
"People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annhilated: vaporized was the usual word." â"pg 20