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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.
So what?! It's not like the government has a ranking system that denies them the ability to travel out of the coun... oh... wait.
I wonder how many "rebels" will wear masks, sunglasses, wigs, overcoats, and walk with a limp as they jaywalk, just to "beat the man".
It doesn't matter. I don't know if you have seen what they are using, it's an AI augmented camera array that picks up multiple markers of a persons identity, they are really pretty scary.
One of the things it does is provide descriptions of offenders in real terms like "suspect is moving west, red shirt, black shorts, black hair, 5'3", white shoes". Worse they pick up mood, so it can tell if you are pissed off.
It's about the most intrusive thing I've ever seen AND if you are paying attention politicians used some awful tragedy to implant the idea into peoples conscious that these sorts of camera arrays are a necessity and all the ones I saw on news reports talking of the need for it so they prepare the way for legislation to mandate these devices.
I wouldn't be surprised if you see it soon.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.