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.

Comments

Too late

[thegreatbob]

Too late for them; resist this sort of stuff before it consumes you entirely. Don't see the changes from day to day? It's called "creep" for a reason.

Re:Too late

[grep -v '.*' *]

It's called "creep" for a reason.

And here I thought it was named that way for the person doing all of the camera watching.

But that was in the good old days when people manned the monitors, not now when you point a cam at a monitor and let the computer do the watching for you.

Re:Too late

[Rick Schumann]

Some of us do, and what do we get for our attention and trouble? We get labeled 'conspiracy theorists', or maybe 'luddites', or maybe 'potential terrorist/criminal' ("what do you have to hide, CItizen?"). Meanwhile idiots gobble up so-called 'social media' like it's candy, post their entire lives on it, and give you the stink-eye when you try to tell them that their right to privacy is valuable, and that they're just giving it away to corporations and governments that don't give a flying fuck about them as human beings, just as revenue sources, or as 'work units', or whatever governments think of people as. We're already living in a country (U.S.) where people are voluntarily purchasing with their own money technologies that can and are used to spy and surveil them 24/7/365 (smartphones, 'smart' TVs, Amazon Alexa and similar, game consoles with built-in cameras and microphones that require always-on internet connectivity, 'Iot' devices like Nest, so-called 'fitness bands', and so on) and are having some innocuous technologies forced on them ('smart' utility meters, which of themselves are not evil, but the immediacy of the data collection can be used to feed into profiles of people; when they're home, what they might be doing, etc; traffic monitoring cameras everywhere you look, etc). ISPs collecting data on everything you do on the Internet (even though they have to be lying when they say they aren't doing it, 24/7/365) and so on. Then there's so-called 'self driving cars', of which Google would love to see a world where no one is allowed to drive themselves, and the car has no controls whatsoever for a human occupant anyway, so you have ZERO CONTROL over the vehicle; of course it's got cameras and microphones inside it to monitor you, and GPS, and it can be remotely controlled by law enforcement, the government, and of course any criminals with the technical chops to hack into it and seize control of the car's systems. THIS IS THE WORLD WE'RE ALREADY LIVING IN, AND NOBODY IS REALLY COMPLAINING YET. If you do complain, as previously stated, most people look at you like you're nuts.

There will be a sharp drop-off at some point. Something will go too far, and it'll be the thing that finally gets people to wake up. Sadly, it'll probably be when the government(s) decide to openly treat citizens like convicts in a prison, with no freedom to speak of, and full knowledge that you're monitored and judged 24/7/365 everywhere you go, whatever you're doing. China and it's assholery anti-human policies is just the foreshadowing of what's to come. No government ever cedes power back to the citizens; power always seeks more power. There is a small chance that enough people like you and I are paying attention and speaking up, so that everyone else will be aware enough to avoid this sort of extreme dystopian future, but at the moment it's looking rather slim. It might take it being too late and there having to be an uprising. Or perhaps it's all really coming on too slow and subtle, and no one will notice until it's way too late to stop it. Or, even worse: it'll happen, and everyone will have been so thoroughly indoctrinated, that they'll think it's good and right and normal.

I'm actually glad I probably won't live long enough to see it all happen, and even gladder that I don't believe in an afterlife or reincarnation. I don't want to see what happens afterwards. :-(

..but on the other hand: I hear rumblings of Chinese citizenry getting good and bloody well tired of Communist Chinese government bullshit. Wouldn't be the first time in China's history, or the last I suspect, that there was an Uprising and a Revolution of one kind or another. You don't want to piss off a BILLION people, now do you? They could kill 500,000,000 of them in a civil war and still lose. *shrug* you never know, human rights and democracy might win out in the end. Despite all my gloom-and-doom, there is always a spark of hope left.. We might have a Star Trek future yet..

Re:Too late

[Rick Schumann]

If people don't regularly raise a stink about enchroachment upon liberties, they irrevocably vanish.

Smartphones. The Media. Television. Movies. Social media. Professional sports. There are probably other things that should go on this list, but they're all 'Bread and Circuses', 21st Century Edition. They're distracting the vast majority of people from actually paying attention. Then there's the religion angle: keep the Faithful more concerned about the Afterlife than THIS life -- and more afraid of what the Other Religions want to 'do' to you, than what's going on with your own government. The so-called 'war on terror': People who are KEPT in a constant state of terror, have their higher reasoning abilities essentially shut off; they'll turn to whoever it is that says they can 'save them', and will agree to almost anything (i.e., trading your actual freedom for a false sense of security). It's a battle, but it's an uphill battle.

Re:Too late

[Rick Schumann]

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.

Catching up?

[magarity]

So does this mean they'll catch up to the UK soon? Last time I was in London a few years back cameras were everywhere. Their favorite spot is at the tops of escalators and stairs aimed so that even with a hat brim they can catch your face.

Re:Catching up?

[MangoCats]

What the UK isn't doing is getting in your face with real-time analysis of your social infractions. This is sort of heading down the advertising road shown in Minority Report and other movies... they want you to know they know who you are, and what you do, and what you like to do...

Another "It's not US it's China" story

[kelanos]

Never forget that OUR surveillance state is rampaging across our lives, cutting off our potential, turning us into cattle. Anything China is doing the western plutocrats are doing better.

It's up to the middle class to stand up and take charge of their own lives. We need to foster community and stand up to the machine, or the entire Earth will be desolated.

EC did a good video on the social credit system

[barc0001]

And if even half of that comes to fruition in the final "product" it's terrifying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI

Re:Whuffie scores anyone?

[cayenne8]

n't wait for that to be exported to the US and Europe

Sadly, may not be too far away....

In Great Britain, I hear of all the cameras they have all over the place in London....

In the US, look at all the many traffic cameras they now have up in many towns and cities.

Once they're there, not much more of a step to enhance their capabilities.

How can this possibly work in China?

[NotQuiteReal]

They all look the same, don't they?

Re:Whuffie scores anyone?

[deesine]

Communist China is leading the world in large scale human rights advocacy. China is healthy and growing and its large population demands the government be prepared and sensitive to human rights. Safely observing citizen actions and making necessary corrections to policy are two important concerns of the Chinese People's Government. China's most vocal critic is the U.S. government, who most recently was revealed to be conducting large scale intrusive surveillance on its own citizens. Such a government should never be accusing other governments of rights abuse.

Re:Whuffie scores anyone?

[rogoshen1]

it's okay, we all look the same to them (oh the irony) -- so, I'd wager that tom cruise would be flagged as being responsible for basically everything.