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."

Comments

China is great at people control.

[SysEngineer]

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.

Re:China is great at people control.

[crimson tsunami]

China have already skipped plastic and gone straight to mobile payments. Stick 'China mobile payments' in your favorite search engine and see for yourself. Even beggars/buskers in the street prefer mobile payments.
China also has massive numbers of cameras taking pictures of cars on just about every road you could imagine. And they have lots of cars.

Re:Facial disguises soon to come

[sheramil]

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.

Re:Here's to creative anarchy!

[Luckyo]

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.