Slashdot Mirror
China's Surveillance State Will Soon Track Cars (wsj.com)
China is establishing an electronic identification system to track cars nationwide, according to a report on WSJ, which cites records and people briefed on the matter. From a report: Under the plan being rolled out July 1, a radio-frequency identification chip for vehicle tracking will be installed on cars when they are registered. Compliance will be voluntary this year but will be made mandatory for new vehicles at the start of 2019, the people said. Authorities have described the plan as a means to improve public security and to help ease worsening traffic congestion, documents show, a major concern in many Chinese cities partly because clogged roads contribute to air pollution. But such a system, implemented in the world's biggest automotive market, with sales of nearly 30 million vehicles a year, will also vastly expand China's surveillance network, experts say. That network already includes widespread use of security cameras, facial recognition technology and internet monitoring.
US has EZ-Pass, which is a defacto tracking system, even if not originally designed as such.
This is rich. China's surveillance state. How about the UK with ANPR - not just the UK, there are a lot of placed, even here in Canada, with ANPR now but not like the UK has. How about the NSA tapping into every internet backbone in the world? The Five Eyes have more domestic surveillance than China will ever have.
Stories like this make me angry. Not because I think of China as being any better, but because people who write these kind of headlines are just so willfully ignorant it makes my teeth itch. We (read every resident of a Western democracy) have been living in the kind of a surveillance state for the last decade as would have given the head of the KGB at the height of the Soviet Union an absolute erection.
Already there in the US. In the NYC area, cross a bridge ? EZ pass and photos. Use most highways ? EZ pass readers "for statistical tracking". Lose your 95 yo Grandparent and they have a car ? "Elderly male missing, White Nissan Sentra, LPR hit on plate at XX location two hours ago".