Lidtrning to the radio it seems thst China has reached another stage in their monitoring of their citizen's, and forrign devils of course, behaviour. Face recognition that can handle thousands, you are linked to your home, car, relatives, colleagues and associates. I think recording of frequency and location is also logged. Of course, the system will only be used to combat crime . . .
After being "logged" and then going back out into the city it took 7 minutes for the reporter to be "apprehended".
They are seemingly proud enough of it to invite even foreign press to tour a control room. Big Brother is there, at least.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/business/china-internet-conference-wuzhen.html
https://globalnews.ca/news/3858534/china-face-recognition-video-surveillance-privacy/
A great leap forward. :-\
The Chinese have done a fine job of adopting a capitalist approach to questions of ethics. The second link describes how the owners of companies that are developing these technologies are distancing themselves from how their government will use the tech.
QuoteLike Xu, Huang deflected concerns about what his technology could do if misused.
"Before we had this technology, human skill was being relied upon to do these things, it's just that with the technology it becomes more efficient... if you want to solve these concerns, the key doesn't lie with the tech companies," he said.
"Not my problem--I'm just making money here."
On the first listening of the BBC prog I missed the bit where the Chinese guy says that, of course, they already have every one's faces in the database from their ID cards, and that they only keep movement data in store for a week for ordinary people . . . So I wonder if the system flags up people it does not recognise?
Isn't the Chinese Minister of Visual Information named Siyu Tu?
This morning on NPR radio a western visitor described his experience with the facial Identification system that the Chinese have developed. Almost scary. The premise is that if you have done nothing wrong there is no problem. The problem is that the adjudicators of "wrong" might be Republicans or, perish the thought, Evangelicals.
No doubt the crime incidence and the terrorist activity would be diminished with such a system. That gives new meaning to the big brother is watching concept. All that stuff is going on in a Chinese city of 3 million inhabitants.
They seemingly have 20 million cameras in place so far, heading for 50 million.
It is the same sort of deterent that reduced the incidence of theft in Saudi Arabia. Loosing your right hand on the first offence kept them on the straight and narrow. Even whilst being a "normal person" the risk of any action being construed as illegal or anti-social is too high. The idea tgst these csn be used to "predict" crime is rather frightening beyond the observation of obviously agitated groups of people in a land were free expression can be an arrestable offence.
In a land where corruption seems to be an industry what are the chances of officials blackmailing people observed doing naughty things?
Big supermarkets use facial recognition software to identify problem customers and enforce bans.
Quote from: OldGit on December 12, 2017, 10:01:35 AM
Big supermarkets use facial recognition software to identify problem customers and enforce bans.
Oh? New one on me! Sort of hope fottball clubs do the same...
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/23/facial-recognition-is-tracking-customers-as-they-shop-in-stores-tech-company-says.html
This is further fulfilment of predictive sci-fi stories written before such technology got out of the university lab. In one story silicon rubber filler pads were used to modify face shapes, as was theatrical make-up. Whating for the anouncement that all Cinese will have an RFID chip implanted soon after birth. Probably in the foot, then there can be detectors in the floor at every doorway and ATM etc as backup or confirming ID.