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Chinese 'Gait Recognition' Tech IDs People By How They Walk; Police Have Started Using It on Streets of Beijing and Shanghai (apnews.com)
Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool: "gait recognition" software that uses people's body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras. From a report: Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, "gait recognition" is part of a push across China to develop artificial-intelligence and data-driven surveillance that is raising concern about how far the technology will go. Huang Yongzhen, the CEO of Watrix, said that its system can identify people from up to 50 meters (165 feet) away, even with their back turned or face covered. This can fill a gap in facial recognition, which needs close-up, high-resolution images of a person's face to work. "You don't need people's cooperation for us to be able to recognize their identity," Huang said in an interview in his Beijing office. "Gait analysis can't be fooled by simply limping, walking with splayed feet or hunching over, because we're analyzing all the features of an entire body."
Put a pebble in one shoe and wear a loose jacket...
What people do not realize (because they ignore or do not know human history), "criminals" described Jews in Nazi Germany, "politically unreliable people" under Stalin, etc. The next Hitler will get all his victims served on a plate, no way to hide. The only way to prevent that is to ban these technologies outright and very clearly label them as what they are: A tool for oppression that is a severe threat to anybody.
Oh, and actual criminals are either not important enough or get caught just fine without technology like this.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I very very long time ago -- twenty, thirty years ago -- I read a book on the human art of spying. There was a lengthy discussion about evading capture when spying in enemy territory.
A few pages discussed the concept that when someone is following you, on-foot, through a busy shopping mall, you ought to alter your gait, since that's a very easy way that human eyes track human prey.
The chapter ended with a simple, and straight-forward comment to the effect of: nothing is better than simply placing a small pebble in one of your shoes.
I don't know why the Chinese government bothers to preserve this paper-thin pretense that they give a shit about how their citizens feel about anything and just get it over with: implant tracking chips in everyone from birth so they can be wirelessly tracked 24/7/365 for as long as they live. That's about where they're going with this. It's not like the average Chinese citizen, by now, doesn't already realize that they have zero privacy and zero rights of any kind anyway.