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China's All-Seeing Surveillance State Is Reading Its Citizens' Faces (wsj.com)
China's government is using facial-recognition technology to help promote good behavior and catch lawbreakers, reports the WSJ. From the article: Facial-recognition technology, once a specter of dystopian science fiction, is becoming a feature of daily life in China, where authorities are using it on streets, in subway stations, at airports and at border crossings in a vast experiment in social engineering (alternative source). Their goal: to influence behavior and identify lawbreakers. Ms. Gan, 31 years old, had been caught on camera crossing illegally here once before, allowing the system to match her two images. Text displayed on the crosswalk screens identified her as a repeat offender. "I won't ever run a red light again," she said. China is rushing to deploy new technologies to monitor its people in ways that would spook many in the U.S. and the West. Unfettered by privacy concerns or public debate, Beijing's authoritarian leaders are installing iris scanners at security checkpoints in troubled regions and using sophisticated software to monitor ramblings on social media. By 2020, the government hopes to implement a national "social credit" system that would assign every citizen a rating based on how they behave at work, in public venues and in their financial dealings.
Because of this I use the approach above, though I'll wager neither is all that great at real bulletproof privacy.
I have a close friend who does that. Problem is, no matter how careful you are, you let a word or two slip here and there. They can even glean quite a bit about your personality even from how you write things, what your sense of humor is like, and so on. I don't use any social media anymore, and I don't use my real name online. I know damned well that corporations and the government still have data on me because aside from going completely dark (no internet, no phone, pay cash for everything, etc) I still 'leak' some data. But I'll be damned if I'm going to give it away freely.