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Will Facial Recognition in China Lead To Total Surveillance? (washingtonpost.com)
schwit1 shares a new Washington Post article about China's police and security state -- including the facial recognition cameras allow access to apartment buildings. "If I am carrying shopping bags in both hands, I just have to look ahead and the door swings open," one 40-year-old woman tells the Post. "And my 5-year-old daughter can just look up at the camera and get in. It's good for kids because they often lose their keys."
But for the police, the cameras that replaced the residents' old entry cards serve quite a different purpose. Now they can see who's coming and going, and by combining artificial intelligence with a huge national bank of photos, the system in this pilot project should enable police to identify what one police report, shared with The Washington Post, called the "bad guys" who once might have slipped by... Banks, airports, hotels and even public toilets are all trying to verify people's identities by analyzing their faces. But the police and security state have been the most enthusiastic about embracing this new technology.
The pilot in Chongqing forms one tiny part of an ambitious plan, known as "Xue Liang," which can be translated as "Sharp Eyes." The intent is to connect the security cameras that already scan roads, shopping malls and transport hubs with private cameras on compounds and buildings, and integrate them into one nationwide surveillance and data-sharing platform... At the back end, these efforts merge with a vast database of information on every citizen, a "Police Cloud" that aims to scoop up such data as criminal and medical records, travel bookings, online purchase and even social media comments -- and link it to everyone's identity card and face.
The pilot in Chongqing forms one tiny part of an ambitious plan, known as "Xue Liang," which can be translated as "Sharp Eyes." The intent is to connect the security cameras that already scan roads, shopping malls and transport hubs with private cameras on compounds and buildings, and integrate them into one nationwide surveillance and data-sharing platform... At the back end, these efforts merge with a vast database of information on every citizen, a "Police Cloud" that aims to scoop up such data as criminal and medical records, travel bookings, online purchase and even social media comments -- and link it to everyone's identity card and face.
You people apparently have not been paying any attention to what China has been doing for decades now. Automated facial scanning is but one tiny piece in a massive machine that has existed for quite a long time now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Worldwide!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I see that, and you see that, and we both get lumped in with the tinfoil-hat crowd, told we're dangerously paranoid, told "that'll never happen" by the shills and the deniers, told "SDCs will save lives" (i.e. trading security and 'safety' for freedom, yet again), told "humans aren't capable of driving a car so we need machines to do it for us" (which is a flat-out lie), and so on. Meanwhile the technology is half-baked at best, the security of the software running them will be half-assed and full of holes, and as you allude to, SDCs will not only be capble of being tracked in realtime via an always-on radio link, but will be capable of being taken control of remotely at any time, with no manual override possible by the occupant. This will be even more true for Level 5 SDCs, which won't have any controls for a human driver (and fuck that, I *would* rather walk than step into one of those four-wheeled nightmare machines) so you'll literally have ZERO control over the machine, it'll do whatever it wants to do (or whatever who is actually in control wants it to do) and you'll have ZERO say over any of it. Needless to say (at least for anyone who can actually think these things through) any decent hacker will be able to hack these vehicles and take control just as if they were the police or the government; do I really need to ennumerate all the things criminal hackers could do to you with this ability?
Know what really disturbs me the most? How some people envision being able to put their kids in some Level 5 SDC (no controls at all) by themselves and send them off to Grandma's house or wherever. *SHUDDER* So far as I'm concerned you may as well just put a gun to their little heads and pull the trigger, it'd be a faster and less painful way to go.
I'd rather walk. Or perhaps I'll go back to riding a motorcycle full-time, like I used to when I was in my 20's. No way in hell I'll ever have a SDC or even ride in one. Me driving or human driver or nothing, thanks anyway.
The whole point of a book like "1984" is to explore what happens to society when Government has this level of surveillance and control. When you can't curse the "great leader" in your home without someone or something hearing you and reporting you; when you can't discuss government with your neighbors without your words being reported; when you can't gather with like-minded people to discuss ways to change the government (either within the rules, or outside them) without being arrested as a danger; when the government can identify every person in a demonstration, the age-old remedy of revolution becomes unimaginable, and society freezes into rigid authoritarianism with no viable hope to break free.
And if you believe that China is the only government teetering on the edge of this chasm, you haven't been paying attention.
And the worms ate into his brain.