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Jaywalkers Under Surveillance In China Will Soon Be Punished Via Text Messages (scmp.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from South China Morning Post: Traffic police in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen have always had a reputation for strict enforcement of those flouting road rules in the metropolis of 12 million people. Now with the help of artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology, jaywalkers will not only be publicly named and shamed, they will be notified of their wrongdoing via instant messaging -- along with the fine. Intellifusion, a Shenzhen-based AI firm that provides technology to the city's police to display the faces of jaywalkers on large LED screens at intersections, is now talking with local mobile phone carriers and social media platforms such as WeChat and Sina Weibo to develop a system where offenders will receive personal text messages as soon as they violate the rules, according to Wang Jun, the company's director of marketing solutions.
For the current system installed in Shenzhen, Intellifusion installed cameras with 7 million pixels of resolution to capture photos of pedestrians crossing the road against traffic lights. Facial recognition technology identifies the individual from a database and displays a photo of the jaywalking offense, the family name of the offender and part of their government identification number on large LED screens above the pavement. In the 10 months to February this year, as many as 13,930 jaywalking offenders were recorded and displayed on the LED screen at one busy intersection in Futian district, the Shenzhen traffic police announced last month. Taking it a step further, in March the traffic police launched a webpage which displays photos, names and partial ID numbers of jaywalkers. These measures have effectively reduced the number of repeat offenders, according to Wang. The next step -- informing the errant pedestrians by text or Weibo instant messaging -- could have the added benefit of eliminating the cost of erecting large LED screens across the cities, he said.
For the current system installed in Shenzhen, Intellifusion installed cameras with 7 million pixels of resolution to capture photos of pedestrians crossing the road against traffic lights. Facial recognition technology identifies the individual from a database and displays a photo of the jaywalking offense, the family name of the offender and part of their government identification number on large LED screens above the pavement. In the 10 months to February this year, as many as 13,930 jaywalking offenders were recorded and displayed on the LED screen at one busy intersection in Futian district, the Shenzhen traffic police announced last month. Taking it a step further, in March the traffic police launched a webpage which displays photos, names and partial ID numbers of jaywalkers. These measures have effectively reduced the number of repeat offenders, according to Wang. The next step -- informing the errant pedestrians by text or Weibo instant messaging -- could have the added benefit of eliminating the cost of erecting large LED screens across the cities, he said.
This is building a world I don't particularly want to live in.
Shaming pedestrians for crossing safe roads (I assume they are not suicidal) while the president makes himself an all-powerful dictator makes a fine country indeed. I'd rather have a country where corruption is automatically shamed.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Nice Big Brother makes sure you cross the road safely.
Nice Big Brother doesn't mind what else you do.
Nice Big Brother won't object if you attend a protest.
Nice Big Brother won't keep a record of who you talk to.
Nice Big Brother has only your best interests at heart.
All praise Nice Big Brother!
This is just another part of government of Xi's psychological warfare on the people. They are sending the message that they are God and a lack of reverence will be punished. The point is to keep people thinking that the government has absolute control and thus any challenge to it would be futile.
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