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."
1984, here we come.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Without a doubt, a face-recognition software in China is an incredible hi tech piece of software.
As the article states, there's way more cameras in use, or planned, in places like Shenzen than in all of London.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
They don't work in the UK, or so we are told. Why should they work in the PRC?
Is that is may come to the US. One of the rationals for extending US copyright was that we needed to maintain parity with the European Union. I could see some argument regarding anti-terrorism parity resulting in more surveillance here as well.
from the article;
//
This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. 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.
Like many other security executives I interviewed in China, Yao denies that a primary use of the technology he is selling is to hunt down political activists. "Ninety-five percent," he insists, "is just for regular safety."
In other words, we can find every political activist, dissident and extremist in China,
using only five percent of our security/monitoring capacity.
If this is just regular security, I think I prefer mine unleaded.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
... not what they claim such a system will be used for but rather what it will actually be used for.
Consider all the issues coming to light in pre-Olympic China, regarding human rights....
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.
0.5M vs 2.0M - what difference does it make? The thought process behind it and loss of privacy is the same. The US is also implementing biometric databases and national ID cards, so nothing to crow about here (and don't forget that the US has a higher percentage of it's population in jail than China). The West may have China beat in terms of freedom of speech and lack of censorship, but when it comes to big-brother style monitoring and loss of privacy it's neck and neck.
Why is it that the authors of these various surveillance societies don't show good faith by building into their laws the requirement that the details of their own lives, being public servants and all, should be constantly monitored and broadcast.
(Personally I would have loved to have the online Clintoncam available a few years back.)
This falls right into the same category which results in that strange coincidence whereby the people who decide who gets paid how much just coincidentally always happen to be worth the very most themselves.
Anyway. Bring on the revolution. It's starting soon I just know it...any day now...
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
The Brits are going to have to get serious if they want to compete on canine hygiene enforcement.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The sooner that totalitarianism is unmasked in all its horrible glory, the better. One of two things will result.
...or they will continue as before, the totalitarians march in, and they will learn the true meaning of dictatorship.
Either the anarchist kids who do their best to undermine society will wake up to the threat...
Lenin used the term "useful idiots" to describe the nattering spoiled brat self-proclaimed "intellectual elite" of Russia that cried for anarchism. Anarchists were quite successful in destroying Russian civil society, first attacking the wealthy capitalists, then the bourgeoisie, then the petty-bourgeoisie, and finally turning on the well-meaning social democrats.
With all opposition swept aside, Lenin took over. His first act was to line all the useful idiots against the wall.
If he is, he's dead wrong. Law enforcement and the military at the top levels are operating more like totalitarian enforcers rather than protecting and serving. The operating mentality is that privacy rights of citizens only serve to impede these neo-totalitarian goals of law enforcement.
In other words, law enforcement whether it's the FBI, Chinese government, or the City of Chicago, will ALWAYS take as many rights as they can in the name of providing security. They actually think that if they can only gain a certain level of knowledge, then they will be able to control practically everything, and thereby provide "security".
These ideas must be fought on two fronts: 1. fighting for privacy in all forms. 2. seeking to change way people view what law enforcement can do.
As for what a person in the US, like me, can do for China...well, that's easy, we must be outspoken in our rejection of American companies that are making money by helping the Chinese abuse its citizens.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Washington and London are probably green with envy.
I don't doubt that the Chinese government would like to build such a system. I have no doubt that they would love, honestly, to actually have the power and influence that they are rumored to have in the west over their people, and to truly be the police state they are accused of being. The government there, like most governments everywhere, has an appetite for power.
But the days of Mao are long gone. There was a time not so long ago when parents everywhere encouraged their children to pursue a career in the state, as a policeman or soldier or political cadre. In the socialist days, that was how you advanced, how you got a good life. The promise of wealth, power, but most of all prestige could be found in those careers. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of police and military folks in those days.
Now, though, the situation has changed. True wealth and prestige come from the market, from private enterprise, and this simple fact is not lost on anyone in China. Parents are realistic about this. They don't encourage their children to enter the police or military anymore -- and if you are Chinese or even Chinese American you know well what "encourage" means when it's being done by a Chinese parent. The policeman and soldier's life is no longer stable or guaranteed, and besides being dangerous it generates far less income for the family than an office job (or, truth be told, even one selling fruit.)
Because of this, there are not enough young Chinese entering the police force.
To put this in perspective, Beijing has 10 million residents, around 4 million migrant workers, and a likely 2 or 3 million undocumented (illegal) residents. In a city this size, a small police force simply doesn't cut it.
It's not for lack of trying, but mainland China simply does not have the infrastructure necessary to be the police state it wants to be and that the west fears it is. As Beijingers say, "guan bu zhao", there are too many people and not enough cops.
So it's not the least bit surprising that this golden shield idea is the goverment's latest fantasy, a way to keep tabs on the populace all while circumventing the increasing human resources shortage that is crippling their once formidable security force.
But that's all it is -- a fantasy.
Sure, they'll put up cameras and buy high-tech imaging software, and maybe they'll be able to maintain that infrastructure in Wang Fu Jing, Xin Tian Di, and downtown Shen Zhen. But in the rest of China -- where the bulk of the population lives -- the notion is simply untenable.
China has more than a billion people, and most of them live in small rural villages that lack sewage infrastructure and running water. The idea that the government would prioritize CCTV surveillance systems in these areas is laughable. They simply don't have the money, the experts necessary to put it up, or any of the other basic requirements for a system that size.
You simply cannot govern a billion people by force alone. Nationalist propaganda can help get people to give you the benefit of the doubt, but once people are suffering the government gets the blame whether it deserves it or not. If you don't believe me, have a chat with a Beijing taxi driver about their wages, which are set by the government. They'll give you an earful. And that's in the capital. It's worse in the provinces.
The Chinese government knows this, and they aren't fools. The polarization of wealth is a much more pressing problem on their agenda than putting up cameras, because they remember that it was precisely a wealthy upper class stomping on the rural poor that put them into power in the first place.
Governments, including ours, "sell" these societal strategies to their citizens as crime-fighting tools. The citizens like low-cost tools because they have fantasies about their taxes going down, etc. But also, J.Q.Public probably often assumes crimes are things like stolen purses or muggers. But such uses are very "small fry" and no serious government is going to build a whole societal surveillance system for so limited a purpose.
Long ago, I had my car broken into in a major US city. When the police arrived, I asked them if they were going to fingerprint it, etc. It seemed plausible they would get some good prints. They just laughed. Only for capital crimes, they explained. It just isn't worth the time and trouble otherwise.
And probably it's only used for capital crimes because they get public exposure. That probably accounts for why there are racial disparities in which capital crimes get followed up. Even there, it is (sadly) probably not really about the severity of the crime, it is more likely about its political impact.
The real crimes, the ones that motivate a government, are those of disagreeing with who's in power in that government or what that power is being used for.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Brin doesn't advocate a surveillance state. In Brin's vision, information is available about everyone to everyone, including government officials. The problem with a surveillance state is asymmetric information. In fact, I'm not sure Brin even advocates that; it's rather that he recognizes surveillance as inevitable and tries to make the best of it by reducing the asymmetry.
As for Schneier's criticism, first, I think his arguments is full of holes, and second, he fails to come up with a better alternative. Surveillance is happening. What are you going to do about it?
My point here obviously isn't to justify it but to point out that an "all seeing eye" at the very least serves the purpose of stamping out opposition to the government. Just good record keeping and census as in the case of 18th century China was enough to track down a dissenting voice.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Well, who can blame them really? They've got to be preparing to do something with all that high tech manufacturing capacity they've got once the economic bottom falls out of the US purchasing market.
I can hardly wait to find out how the analogous situation in the robot manufacturing area plays out. Fortunately, with all those 200,000 cameras, I should have no trouble sitting back and watching it on TV. Robots can't move across water can they? No, probably only in science fiction.
Ok, that's silly. No one would ever do anything bad with robots. Let's just stick to the issue of cameras and overcapacity...
Is this project at least "green"? Have they at least planned for environmentally friendly ways of disposing of this many cameras when version 2.0 comes along? Well, maybe the US can by them second-hand as part of some sort of secret arms deal when it hasn't the money to buy them nor the factories to make them. Reduce, reuse, recycle... It's a grand tradition in the international weapons market, which in some ways seems to have pioneered the whole "green" movement now that I think about it. But, oh, that's right. Cameras aren't weapons. Never mind.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Oh, I absolutely understand that. I saw him at a Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference a few years back and chatted with him a little about this in the after-talk mingle, so I don't think I'm too confused about what his position is. At least I had a chance, while standing there incredulous, to ask him if he really believed that. (Those are great conferences, by the way, and there's one coming up in New Haven next week. I don't have any clue if Brin will go, and don't much care, but there's always something good on the agenda in my experience, and I wanted to slip in a plug.)
But my point is that it has to be at least a presupposition of his (or anyone's) if you're going to entertain this as other than a philosophical exercise to say that you have to "get there from here". So they've done part of Brin's vision--my point is: How do we get them to do the rest? Because I think the problem with Brin's vision is that you can't ever under any forseeable circumstances get everyone to do the rest. The world is always going to be full of power imbalances, and there will always be someone wanting to keep it that way. So it's just a fantasy to say it could be done. That's why I pointed to this article in my prior post.
If Brin believes it's possible to motivate people to all at the same time do something in the public interest that way, first of all, his energy is better spent on getting people to all believe in Global Climate Change, because that's a much more pressing problem and affects us all and yet we can't get people to agree on that either. But either way, it's time for him to put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and say what the next step is toward Utopia because I'm as tired of his proposed non-solution as I am of some of hearing of some of the non-solutions being pursued for Climate Change.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Actually, in this case they are the one and the same.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
It's easy to increase your power when you can make your enemies disappear. It's easy to identify one single enemy, then track him and see who he is talking to, where he goes to meetings and suddenly one lead leads you to a den of dissention.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Once you have enough, you send in the jack-booted thugs to black-bag all the big boys and some of the smaller players (to scare the rest of the opposition rank and file) and BAM, no more dissention. They can't even meet in secret, because their every move is being watched.
We're not that far removed from this and we supposedly have the political tools to stop it. Problem is, we don't really care. At best half of us get up off our fat asses to vote. So in a culture that like China WHICH DOESN'T SEE THIS AS A BAD THING, I'm doubtful that anything will of complaints. That's not the Chinese way.
The parent's "brin would be happy comment" seemed to be partially tongue in cheek. Brin's ideas are no "solution" to anything. At best, he's misguided, at worst he's on the CIA payroll sewing seeds of dischord among privacy advocates.
Brin's idea is interesting in theory, but that's it. It has a major flaw:
The government will never be 100% open to its citizens. Sure, as some sort of purely philosophical thought experiment, the idea is interesting to ponder, but it has no relevance when discussing actual policy. Let me break it down further:
1. Brin is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If everyone just gave up privacy rights en masse in some Faustian bargain with the government agreeing to do the same it would be a tragic loss for the idea of liberty. To me, this is akin to the US surrendering to the USSR at the height of the Cold War.
2. Even the whole of the US would not be able to watch the government close enough all the time to check its power and ensure it was not keeping secrets or having 'private' information in some way. This incorrect assumption is at the heart of those who support CCS cameras and other privacy invading tactics: no matter how much information you have, you cannot provide total security. It works both ways...citizenry to government and government to citizenry.
Thank you Dave Raggett
1. Put in place censors at information bottlenecks, so as to allow favorable idea to spread and strengthen through collaboration, while dividing dissenters, and forcing them to compete individually.
2. Implement a system to track the populations activities and communications, automatically approximating individual allegiances and beliefs.
4. Obfuscate justice process, then gradually and subtly modify it in such a way as to discourage dissent, and encourage blind allegiance. Making use of information gleaned from step two justify all changes using system implemented in step one
5. use your new self-subjugating population as a tool to do your bidding
and ultimately, it will be sold to the US Government, that's when Big Brother would get even bigger!
OMG!
It's a shame when western nations are becoming more like china the media tries to distance the realities between the two instead of showing how our freedoms are becoming more like them.
They could just be setting up the ultimate census network.... who needs to do sample sets when you can just count the unique faces...
Personally I don't mind the accumulation of data. I don't even mind that there is some organization watching my every move.
This type of surveillance isn't about individuals however. It's about population analysis... cultural trends, etc. It's certainly not about policing... there is ample evidence that widespread surveillance doesn't work against criminals who are aware of it.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.