Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Police Begin Tracking Citizens With Face-Recognizing Smart Glasses (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
At a highway check point on the outskirts of Beijing, local police are this week testing out a new security tool: smart glasses that can pick up facial features and car registration plates, and match them in real-time with a database of suspects. The AI-powered glasses, made by LLVision, scan the faces of vehicle occupants and the plates, flagging with a red box and warning sign to the wearer when any match up with a centralized "blacklist".
The test -- which coincides with the annual meeting of China's parliament in central Beijing -- underscores a major push by China's leaders to leverage technology to boost security in the country... Wu Fei, chief executive of LLVision, said people should not be worried about privacy concerns because China's authorities were using the equipment for "noble causes", catching suspects and fugitives from the law. "We trust the government," he told Reuters at the company's headquarters in Beijing.
This weekend while China's President Xi Jinping is expected to push through a reform allowing him to stay in power indefinitely, Reuters reports that the Chinese goverment is pushing the use of cutting-edge technology "to track and control behavior that goes against the interests of the ruling Communist Party online and in the wider world... A key concern is that blacklists could include a wide range of people stretching from lawyers and artists to political dissidents, charity workers, journalists and rights activists...
"The new technologies range from police robots for crowd control, to drones to monitor border areas, and artificially intelligent systems to track and censor behavior online," Reuters reports, citing one Hong Kong researcher who argues that China now sees internet and communication technologies "as absolutely indispensable tools of social and political control."
The test -- which coincides with the annual meeting of China's parliament in central Beijing -- underscores a major push by China's leaders to leverage technology to boost security in the country... Wu Fei, chief executive of LLVision, said people should not be worried about privacy concerns because China's authorities were using the equipment for "noble causes", catching suspects and fugitives from the law. "We trust the government," he told Reuters at the company's headquarters in Beijing.
This weekend while China's President Xi Jinping is expected to push through a reform allowing him to stay in power indefinitely, Reuters reports that the Chinese goverment is pushing the use of cutting-edge technology "to track and control behavior that goes against the interests of the ruling Communist Party online and in the wider world... A key concern is that blacklists could include a wide range of people stretching from lawyers and artists to political dissidents, charity workers, journalists and rights activists...
"The new technologies range from police robots for crowd control, to drones to monitor border areas, and artificially intelligent systems to track and censor behavior online," Reuters reports, citing one Hong Kong researcher who argues that China now sees internet and communication technologies "as absolutely indispensable tools of social and political control."
and we can roll out Tank Man 9000 and see how well they work ageist them
That word apparently is a euphemism in China for "ensuring none of the work-units (aka human beings) have anything even remotely resembling civil rights". How much of a shithole is China to live in? How long with >1 billion people put up with shit like this before there is a bloody revolt? Or will China go the way of al-Assad and just kill their own citizens wholesale? Seriously, how can our species call itself "civilized" when, in 2018, we have shit like the above going on in the world? Rhetorical question; we're NOT civilized, we're violent animals with toys. And guns. And bombs. And, apparently, we don't give a flying fuck about anyone.
How are they pulling this off technically? I can't imagine what sort of queries you'd need to do for facial recognition, and how many per second in a sea of people? Are they getting good results or is it just timing out on most people or what?
Arr rook same!
Have gnu, will travel.
The difference between America and China is in the US, the government watches the peoples money to control them but China is still heavy cash based so they have to use watching people to control the population. Once China becomes more plastic cash card oriented they will not have to use the cameras as much.
America is car based but China is more pedestrian. That is why US police cars have cameras that have license plate recognition and China has facial recognition. Do not worry America, soon the police body cams will have face recognition.
I wonder how much trouble you'd get into if you wore an obvious papercraft mask with a photo of your own face photoshopped onto the front.
It strikes me as one of those "ain't I clever" as you peer out between the prison bars kind of deals.
You kidding? Orwellian surveillance *is* Google's business goal. Any 'life improvement' caused by their products is simply the bait necessary to get people to willingly participate, given their lack of ability to legally force people to carry smartphones etc. (No matter though, since it's a more effective form of compliance assurance than governmental coercion anyway).
Miniluv could never be a government agency, at least not in America.
You do not understand systemic differences. In China, law is applied different both on executive and judiciary level. Protections you get in US do not exist. Where protections exist, they are applied selectively.
Example: In US, if there's a suspicion of drug use in a private club, police has to go through a long process to obtain a warrant, and even then doesn't have ability to just mass incarcerate everyone inside. In China the normal way to handle such suspicion is to simply go in, detain everyone and force everyone in the club to pee in a test cup while policeman is watching. And if you fail, legal system will crush you, as China's legal system absolutely abhors drug users.
And you do not understand the rampant abuses and rubber-stamp-warrant system in the US. Mass facial recognition is being used by US police forces without a warrant. Same with LPRs. And speaking of ridiculous drug searches, police without a warrant detained and searched an entire school and searched so invasively on school children there's currently sexual assault lawsuits over it. China being worse doesn't mean our own rights abuses aren't appalling.