12 ms·

China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

222 points by newsreview1 7y ago

quotz 7y ago
Jesus... This is a very representative example of what happens when technology is not used in a democratic way, and when it is. It can be abused as much as it could be used for the public benefit
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  CCTV doesn't help in democratic countries where crimes rates have been plumeting for the last decade. They do create a lot of dissidents though and rightly so in my opinion. If I would be in reach of a public surveillance camera, I would certainly try to sabotage it. Maybe roast the sensor because I happen to have a bright flashlight in my pocket. Damn, I guess I have become a criminal now...
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    > CCTV doesn't help in democratic countries A trivial search shows otherwise: 1.in the UK where the Russian operatives were caught in Salisbury trying to murder a real-life dissident 2. in the UK, where the police have dedicated units of 'super-recognisers' that review CCTV footage and solved many a crime. [1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7182071/cctv-russian-spy-poisoning-suspects-travel-london-salisbury/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7182071/cctv-russian-spy-poiso... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/11/super-recognisers-police-the-people-who-never-forget-a-face https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/11/super-recogn... [2]
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      Compare UK crime statistics with countries that do not employ it and you have empirical evidence that says otherwise.
  - quotz 7y ago
    thats why people should have guns
geonnave 7y ago
(2017)
- newsreview1 7y ago
  Yeah, sorry it's a bit old, but I came across it in some of my reading today regarding the San Francisco attempt to ban facial recognition software with an ordinance passed back in in May and didn't see it had ever been shared. Thought it was worth passing along. Cheers, just food for thought. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-san-francisco-facial-recognition-ban-20190516-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-san-francis...
- latchkey 7y ago
  I bet it is down to 2-3 minutes now.
rtpg 7y ago
It's not just about this, but given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. After WW2 the University of Tokyo banned weapons research from happening in its research labs. I think we can be drawing more lines on research like this and take a stand against a lot of this.
- em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
  Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Where there is a way and profit, someone will have the will.
  - dmix 7y ago
    I've never fully agreed that when you're in public all data collection on you is fair game. These are governments that we are setting up to benefit ourselves, this seems far more in the interest of gov interests than citizens. If they were strictly limited to criminal investigations and required a warrant to scan the images that might be a different story.
    - edejong 7y ago
      IMHO, publicly gathered information should automatically be made publicly available. That should give people something to think about.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Technology itself is always amoral. Even splitting the atom can be used to achieve wonderful and horrific outcomes. So of course “facial recognition” per say is not the problem. But in this particular example, we see how facial recognition combined with a couple hundred million surveillance cameras funneled into a massive government data processing pipeline can be extremely effectively used for persistent tracking and nearly instant geolocation of “suspects”. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen how this movie ends. There’s a reason we don’t implant GPS trackers into babies at birth just because they might get lost one day. Maybe China will use this technology to build a veritable Eden free from crime and lost puppies. Or maybe they are closing the grip on a dystopian nightmare. I think you have to be pretty naive to think it’s not looking startlingly like the latter.
dmix 7y ago
> China has the largest monitoring system in the world. There are some 170 million CCTV cameras across the country I wonder how this compares to the UK per capita considering how massive China is.
- goblin89 7y ago
  I suggest that it’s pointless to compare entire countries, since stats would vary by region wildly (at least, in China). Here is a recent comparison by city: https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surveilled-cities/ https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...
- isostatic 7y ago
  So China is about 1 in 8. Publicly operated cameras in the UK would be about 150k, most on public transport http://qrcctv.co.uk/cctv/cctv-facts http://qrcctv.co.uk/cctv/cctv-facts That is far less per capita - 1 in 400. However including private operated ones could bring it upto 4m, or 1 in 16.
- qznc 7y ago
  According to this page [0] London has more cameras than Bejing. After Bejing come Chicago, New York, and Chongqing. [0] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-spied-on-cities-in-the-world.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-spied-on-cities-in-...
devoply 7y ago
As people in Hong Kong have shown, it's as easy to tear all this shit down as it is to put it up.
- pishpash 7y ago
  Not really. At this point the HK government doesn't care to go after the people tearing "all this shit down", but it wouldn't be hard. Protestors have the fantasy that they are invincible, because they know nothing is actually going to happen.
  - convivialdingo 7y ago
    Agreed - up to some breaking point at least. As long as they can reliably put hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets, they are almost invincible. China can handle thousands. Tens of thousands becomes a real problem. More than that and it’s impossible without serious damage. HK would never be governable again after a bloody crackdown of that scale. It would either descend into hell and come out worth nothing, or it could spread into the mainland. Both are unlikely events - I think China is simply waiting it out and ramping up the pressure. Visuals of army training and troop transports are having the desired effect. I think the likely next steps would be to cut services and if that doesn’t work some rationing/price inflation of food and water. Start making the poor resent the rich, and ramp up the propaganda.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  As Tiananmen square has shown there is a difference in rebelling at the periphery and the center.
- xster 7y ago
  What are you referring to? There was a video of people tearing down a cisco street light with weather sensors.
- lvturner 7y ago
  Nothing they tore down even had cameras in it.
pishpash 7y ago
You need to see this in the proper social context. Yes, it's technology and seems like a new phenomenon ("dystopia"!), but that already existed and not much has changed. What if I told you that the local security bureau there always had all the information about people's whereabouts? If you were burglarized, you called one of them up and the thieves were caught. China never worked the way that most people understand.
azinman2 7y ago
Dystopian nightmare.
- de_watcher 7y ago
  Need to rewatch Person of Interest.
lysp 7y ago
> For ordinary people we will only extract their data when they need our help. > When they don't need help, we won't gather their data and it remains only in our big database. In the same sentence: "We won't gather their data" and "The data that we gather remains in a database".
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  It's a common dialectic pattern in law enforcement circles world-wide that data at rest that is never touched is data that doesn't exist. That angle is based on the idea that this data "may as well not exist" but it ignores the many issues with indiscriminate data collection: the data might leak, or management might change and invent undesirable "new" purposes for old data - which, within this theory, then begins to exist retroactively.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    I could get behind this idea as a privacy compromise. The government can collect any data it likes on everything, but any data it then looks at must be published to the world. Ie. The government gets no privacy when looking through its big database. The simplest approach would be to livestream every screen owned by any government agency.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      That's a far worse privacy violation for those being filmed?
  - rebuilder 7y ago
    Or, rather, the automated systems that store and process the data will increasingly do analysis as well, with humans only viewing the data when prompted to by the system. Technically "the police" can be said not to access the data. In reality it's even worse than if they did, because the automated system , if it works as intended, is much more efficient than humans. IOW: If it's a violation of civil rights for humans to process some data, then leaving that job to software is just automating civil rights violations.
hardmaru 7y ago
This article is 2 years old, but quite relevant to current situation. Deep learning and computer vision has progressed quite a bit in the past 2 years, mainly due to incremental algorithmic advances / improved engineering. Unlike fundamental advances, these can be scaled up with increased investments in a more predictable way. Face++, the unicorn company mentioned in this article, is actually the product division owned by Megvii, a machine learning startup based in mainland China. They are planning to IPO soon (see: https://reut.rs/2L7zzGn https://reut.rs/2L7zzGn ) to raise more funds from overseas investors (hence IPO'ing in Hong Kong). There's some irony when a China-based computer vision startup working on facial recognition technology used in Xinjiang is filing for IPO in Hong Kong, rather than in mainland China.
mrich 7y ago
The interesting part is not the story itself, but that they chose to demo it to the BBC. Marketing at its best, they want everyone to be fully aware of their capabilities. Wouldn't be surprised if they were overstated, so as to keep citizens in check. The BBC willingly plays along and does not even question the capabilities either way.
- chrischen 7y ago
  You can bet they only demo things if they are 100% sure it will work (in a very controlled environment not unlike North Korean "tours"), and even then often it will fail because of Soviet-style bureaucratic incompetence.
  - lnsru 7y ago
    I also demo only things, I am sure 100% it will work. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Every YouTube technical demo is repeated hundred times until perfect video is made to make an impression, it works 100%. That’s the purpose of demoing something. About bureaucratic incompetence I have no opinion.
    - spraak 7y ago
      You're arguing semantics when the point is that they likely aren't ask sophisticated as they make themselves look.
      - lnsru 7y ago
        I heard rumors, that Russian KBG had always eyes on all high levels foreigners in the country. All of them were observed expecting to find something interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat Why should China do it differently? BBC journalist is highly valued target for sure. And there you get bonus points for using this information to showcase facial recognition system in 7 minutes.
        7y ago
chrischen 7y ago
This tech works, and the only reason we don't have this in the US is because of our cultural and political aversion to mass surveillance. I'm genuinely curious of what this leads to in China, because this tech is easy enough to deploy if you're willing and politically able. What I'm cynical about is that I don't think China is competent enough to safeguard the data it collects, or forever keep it out of the "wrong hands" like the last guy in the video claims. It's hard enough for US government agencies to protect data that should be privileged (police often run illegitimate checks on license plates), I can't imagine China can prevent its various factions from abusing this power. It'd be ironic, but the incompetencies of their bureaucracy could actually lead to their own downfall by way of this technology (their mass surveillance apparatus) somehow getting coopted by dissidents. There's a misconception that China somehow has an iron grip over its people because it's authoritarian, but if that were true they'd have weeded out corruption.
AFascistWorld 7y ago
The fact that he's probably the only non-Chinese in the vicinity helps.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zonidjan 7y ago
This is entirely unsurprising. Facial recognition for personalized (in public!) advertising is already a big market, and oh, various US localities are using facial recognition. This is, of course, on top of other tracking methods like ALPR and vehicle recognition, credit cards, cell phones, and so on. It is no longer possible to be "off the grid". And that's quite scary when you realize that every single adult has committed many crimes (however minor) in their life.
- Gusmann 7y ago
  Let's just hope that other countries won't implement the 'social credit' system like China did that for example bans you from travelling for committing even like you say minor offenses
Doubl 7y ago
The demonstrators in Hong Kong are very aware of this technology. I hope the masks and the umbrellas they use are effective but I doubt it
- llarsson 7y ago
  Gait analysis (how a person moves around) is definitely also used these days, so the masks may make it a tad more difficult, but certainly not impossible. You know how you can tell that a person walking in the distance is your friend, even though you can't see their face at that distance? Yeah, so can algorithms.
- iiuytrty 7y ago
  There’s also gait analysis, so unless the rioters can disguise how they walk, it will be difficult to hide.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lbj 7y ago
Is the kind of facial recognition only bad if wielded by a nefarious government? Partly I think that huge DNA databases, biometric databases and millions and millions of cameras would be wonderful for catching criminals. On the other hand, the opportunities for abuse are too many to number. Has anyone written anything interesting on where/how to draw the line?
- adossi 7y ago
  >Has anyone written anything interesting on where/how to draw the line? I think the book titled '1984' touched on this subject a little
  - lbj 7y ago
    No, thats a nerfarious government.
louiskottmann 7y ago
I believe the problem is not so much about finding and flagging criminals, but treating the reasons criminals act like that. These cameras do not explain how they got there. Who profits from it? Whoever likes the situation that put criminals in that place. Then there's no need to treat poverty anymore because they'll be dying in a corner as intended, instead of stealing food.
- drawkbox 7y ago
  The answer is almost always economics. Unfortunately, in modern society, or really since the human condition has existed, we address symptoms and short-term fixes not root cause analysis and long term fixes. Criminals don't usually want to be criminals, but sometimes that life is alternatively better. For instance, cartels in Mexico or mafias in general sometimes offer a better quality of life and protection that regular citizens don't get, so it is an attracting force. We could fight cartels with guns and enforcers, leading to ramped up violence all around and making a health issue a dangerous violent criminal one that decreases harm reduction and increases addiction, production issues and safety issues. Or to get at the root cause, we could fight cartels by ending the drug war taking away their massive hundreds of billions of annual black market funds, which gives them power of nation states over decades, and shift that to the legal market to help regulate and make recreational/health uses safer with harm reduction and addition support, as well as providing economic plans to give people a positive legal market choice. Unfortunately we choose wrong largely because of propaganda by the military and prison industrial complexes and the incessant pressing haphazard decisions to blame, fight and go to war with the human condition when health/medical/personal freedom matters are criminalized. We go to war on everything as a solution to peace and quality of life... surveillance state comes from that same corrupted/short-term thinking place. The surveillance state has been going on for decades now in all major countries, there probably isn't much actual detective or investigative work even being done anymore, nor a case by case analysis for justification of these methods, just massive privacy breaches and lots of data noise. Smart criminals and corporate espionage will learn how to use that lack of investigative skill and manipulate the surveillance data, or gain access to it to it and dominate.
mirimir 7y ago
Well, there is the fact that he's a white dude. And makes no attempt to alter his appearance. And, I gather, started from a known location.
- bhelkey 7y ago
  The local government is incentivised to catch the reporter quickly to showcase their capabilities. The reporter is incentivised to be caught quickly to make a more compelling story.
namelosw 7y ago
Not defending surveillance at all. But I want to mention that China's CCTV network is an important part of the legal improvement on self-defense. From ancient time, the law in most dynasties strongly discourages self-defense because it's unjudgeable most of the cases. And it also could be a tool of murdering. Modern China pretty much inherited this tradition. Although the self-defense is defined in the law just like most countries, in practice it's way too strict almost like non-existence for tens of years. Until last year, a famous case[0] causes massive debate across the country, and finally justified as self-defense. The main reason behind this is the massive surveillance network makes legal apartments confident enough to judge. [0]: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201809/03/WS5b8c877ea310add14f38926c.html http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201809/03/WS5b8c877ea310add14...
- turk73 7y ago
  What bs. The US has had decent self defense law for generations without the need for mass surveillance. The more I see of China the more I think no effing way I want a 'one-size-fits-all' global world based on their standards. I might as well die in a world war because I would rather poke them in the eye versus live like that.

222 points by newsreview1 7y ago

Jesus... This is a very representative example of what happens when technology is not used in a democratic way, and when it is. It can be abused as much as it could be used for the public benefit

raxxorrax 7y ago
CCTV doesn't help in democratic countries where crimes rates have been plumeting for the last decade. They do create a lot of dissidents though and rightly so in my opinion. If I would be in reach of a public surveillance camera, I would certainly try to sabotage it. Maybe roast the sensor because I happen to have a bright flashlight in my pocket. Damn, I guess I have become a criminal now...
- pinkfoot 7y ago
  > CCTV doesn't help in democratic countries A trivial search shows otherwise: 1.in the UK where the Russian operatives were caught in Salisbury trying to murder a real-life dissident 2. in the UK, where the police have dedicated units of 'super-recognisers' that review CCTV footage and solved many a crime. [1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7182071/cctv-russian-spy-poisoning-suspects-travel-london-salisbury/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7182071/cctv-russian-spy-poiso... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/11/super-recognisers-police-the-people-who-never-forget-a-face https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/11/super-recogn... [2]
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Compare UK crime statistics with countries that do not employ it and you have empirical evidence that says otherwise.
- quotz 7y ago
  thats why people should have guns

geonnave 7y ago

(2017)

newsreview1 7y ago
Yeah, sorry it's a bit old, but I came across it in some of my reading today regarding the San Francisco attempt to ban facial recognition software with an ordinance passed back in in May and didn't see it had ever been shared. Thought it was worth passing along. Cheers, just food for thought. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-san-francisco-facial-recognition-ban-20190516-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-san-francis...
latchkey 7y ago
I bet it is down to 2-3 minutes now.

rtpg 7y ago

It's not just about this, but given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. After WW2 the University of Tokyo banned weapons research from happening in its research labs. I think we can be drawing more lines on research like this and take a stand against a lot of this.

em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.
- ethbro 7y ago
  Where there is a way and profit, someone will have the will.
- dmix 7y ago
  I've never fully agreed that when you're in public all data collection on you is fair game. These are governments that we are setting up to benefit ourselves, this seems far more in the interest of gov interests than citizens. If they were strictly limited to criminal investigations and required a warrant to scan the images that might be a different story.
  - edejong 7y ago
    IMHO, publicly gathered information should automatically be made publicly available. That should give people something to think about.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Technology itself is always amoral. Even splitting the atom can be used to achieve wonderful and horrific outcomes. So of course “facial recognition” per say is not the problem. But in this particular example, we see how facial recognition combined with a couple hundred million surveillance cameras funneled into a massive government data processing pipeline can be extremely effectively used for persistent tracking and nearly instant geolocation of “suspects”. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen how this movie ends. There’s a reason we don’t implant GPS trackers into babies at birth just because they might get lost one day. Maybe China will use this technology to build a veritable Eden free from crime and lost puppies. Or maybe they are closing the grip on a dystopian nightmare. I think you have to be pretty naive to think it’s not looking startlingly like the latter.

dmix 7y ago

> China has the largest monitoring system in the world. There are some 170 million CCTV cameras across the country I wonder how this compares to the UK per capita considering how massive China is.

goblin89 7y ago
I suggest that it’s pointless to compare entire countries, since stats would vary by region wildly (at least, in China). Here is a recent comparison by city: https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surveilled-cities/ https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...
isostatic 7y ago
So China is about 1 in 8. Publicly operated cameras in the UK would be about 150k, most on public transport http://qrcctv.co.uk/cctv/cctv-facts http://qrcctv.co.uk/cctv/cctv-facts That is far less per capita - 1 in 400. However including private operated ones could bring it upto 4m, or 1 in 16.
qznc 7y ago
According to this page [0] London has more cameras than Bejing. After Bejing come Chicago, New York, and Chongqing. [0] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-spied-on-cities-in-the-world.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-spied-on-cities-in-...

devoply 7y ago

As people in Hong Kong have shown, it's as easy to tear all this shit down as it is to put it up.

pishpash 7y ago
Not really. At this point the HK government doesn't care to go after the people tearing "all this shit down", but it wouldn't be hard. Protestors have the fantasy that they are invincible, because they know nothing is actually going to happen.
- convivialdingo 7y ago
  Agreed - up to some breaking point at least. As long as they can reliably put hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets, they are almost invincible. China can handle thousands. Tens of thousands becomes a real problem. More than that and it’s impossible without serious damage. HK would never be governable again after a bloody crackdown of that scale. It would either descend into hell and come out worth nothing, or it could spread into the mainland. Both are unlikely events - I think China is simply waiting it out and ramping up the pressure. Visuals of army training and troop transports are having the desired effect. I think the likely next steps would be to cut services and if that doesn’t work some rationing/price inflation of food and water. Start making the poor resent the rich, and ramp up the propaganda.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
As Tiananmen square has shown there is a difference in rebelling at the periphery and the center.
xster 7y ago
What are you referring to? There was a video of people tearing down a cisco street light with weather sensors.
lvturner 7y ago
Nothing they tore down even had cameras in it.

pishpash 7y ago

You need to see this in the proper social context. Yes, it's technology and seems like a new phenomenon ("dystopia"!), but that already existed and not much has changed. What if I told you that the local security bureau there always had all the information about people's whereabouts? If you were burglarized, you called one of them up and the thieves were caught. China never worked the way that most people understand.

azinman2 7y ago

Dystopian nightmare.

de_watcher 7y ago
Need to rewatch Person of Interest.

lysp 7y ago

> For ordinary people we will only extract their data when they need our help. > When they don't need help, we won't gather their data and it remains only in our big database. In the same sentence: "We won't gather their data" and "The data that we gather remains in a database".

pgeorgi 7y ago
It's a common dialectic pattern in law enforcement circles world-wide that data at rest that is never touched is data that doesn't exist. That angle is based on the idea that this data "may as well not exist" but it ignores the many issues with indiscriminate data collection: the data might leak, or management might change and invent undesirable "new" purposes for old data - which, within this theory, then begins to exist retroactively.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  I could get behind this idea as a privacy compromise. The government can collect any data it likes on everything, but any data it then looks at must be published to the world. Ie. The government gets no privacy when looking through its big database. The simplest approach would be to livestream every screen owned by any government agency.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    That's a far worse privacy violation for those being filmed?
- rebuilder 7y ago
  Or, rather, the automated systems that store and process the data will increasingly do analysis as well, with humans only viewing the data when prompted to by the system. Technically "the police" can be said not to access the data. In reality it's even worse than if they did, because the automated system , if it works as intended, is much more efficient than humans. IOW: If it's a violation of civil rights for humans to process some data, then leaving that job to software is just automating civil rights violations.

hardmaru 7y ago

This article is 2 years old, but quite relevant to current situation. Deep learning and computer vision has progressed quite a bit in the past 2 years, mainly due to incremental algorithmic advances / improved engineering. Unlike fundamental advances, these can be scaled up with increased investments in a more predictable way. Face++, the unicorn company mentioned in this article, is actually the product division owned by Megvii, a machine learning startup based in mainland China. They are planning to IPO soon (see: https://reut.rs/2L7zzGn https://reut.rs/2L7zzGn ) to raise more funds from overseas investors (hence IPO'ing in Hong Kong). There's some irony when a China-based computer vision startup working on facial recognition technology used in Xinjiang is filing for IPO in Hong Kong, rather than in mainland China.

mrich 7y ago

The interesting part is not the story itself, but that they chose to demo it to the BBC. Marketing at its best, they want everyone to be fully aware of their capabilities. Wouldn't be surprised if they were overstated, so as to keep citizens in check. The BBC willingly plays along and does not even question the capabilities either way.

chrischen 7y ago
You can bet they only demo things if they are 100% sure it will work (in a very controlled environment not unlike North Korean "tours"), and even then often it will fail because of Soviet-style bureaucratic incompetence.
- lnsru 7y ago
  I also demo only things, I am sure 100% it will work. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Every YouTube technical demo is repeated hundred times until perfect video is made to make an impression, it works 100%. That’s the purpose of demoing something. About bureaucratic incompetence I have no opinion.
  - spraak 7y ago
    You're arguing semantics when the point is that they likely aren't ask sophisticated as they make themselves look.
    - lnsru 7y ago
      I heard rumors, that Russian KBG had always eyes on all high levels foreigners in the country. All of them were observed expecting to find something interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat Why should China do it differently? BBC journalist is highly valued target for sure. And there you get bonus points for using this information to showcase facial recognition system in 7 minutes.
      - 7y ago

chrischen 7y ago

This tech works, and the only reason we don't have this in the US is because of our cultural and political aversion to mass surveillance. I'm genuinely curious of what this leads to in China, because this tech is easy enough to deploy if you're willing and politically able. What I'm cynical about is that I don't think China is competent enough to safeguard the data it collects, or forever keep it out of the "wrong hands" like the last guy in the video claims. It's hard enough for US government agencies to protect data that should be privileged (police often run illegitimate checks on license plates), I can't imagine China can prevent its various factions from abusing this power. It'd be ironic, but the incompetencies of their bureaucracy could actually lead to their own downfall by way of this technology (their mass surveillance apparatus) somehow getting coopted by dissidents. There's a misconception that China somehow has an iron grip over its people because it's authoritarian, but if that were true they'd have weeded out corruption.

AFascistWorld 7y ago

The fact that he's probably the only non-Chinese in the vicinity helps.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zonidjan 7y ago

This is entirely unsurprising. Facial recognition for personalized (in public!) advertising is already a big market, and oh, various US localities are using facial recognition. This is, of course, on top of other tracking methods like ALPR and vehicle recognition, credit cards, cell phones, and so on. It is no longer possible to be "off the grid". And that's quite scary when you realize that every single adult has committed many crimes (however minor) in their life.

Gusmann 7y ago
Let's just hope that other countries won't implement the 'social credit' system like China did that for example bans you from travelling for committing even like you say minor offenses

Doubl 7y ago

The demonstrators in Hong Kong are very aware of this technology. I hope the masks and the umbrellas they use are effective but I doubt it

llarsson 7y ago
Gait analysis (how a person moves around) is definitely also used these days, so the masks may make it a tad more difficult, but certainly not impossible. You know how you can tell that a person walking in the distance is your friend, even though you can't see their face at that distance? Yeah, so can algorithms.
iiuytrty 7y ago
There’s also gait analysis, so unless the rioters can disguise how they walk, it will be difficult to hide.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lbj 7y ago

Is the kind of facial recognition only bad if wielded by a nefarious government? Partly I think that huge DNA databases, biometric databases and millions and millions of cameras would be wonderful for catching criminals. On the other hand, the opportunities for abuse are too many to number. Has anyone written anything interesting on where/how to draw the line?

adossi 7y ago
>Has anyone written anything interesting on where/how to draw the line? I think the book titled '1984' touched on this subject a little
- lbj 7y ago
  No, thats a nerfarious government.

louiskottmann 7y ago

I believe the problem is not so much about finding and flagging criminals, but treating the reasons criminals act like that. These cameras do not explain how they got there. Who profits from it? Whoever likes the situation that put criminals in that place. Then there's no need to treat poverty anymore because they'll be dying in a corner as intended, instead of stealing food.

drawkbox 7y ago
The answer is almost always economics. Unfortunately, in modern society, or really since the human condition has existed, we address symptoms and short-term fixes not root cause analysis and long term fixes. Criminals don't usually want to be criminals, but sometimes that life is alternatively better. For instance, cartels in Mexico or mafias in general sometimes offer a better quality of life and protection that regular citizens don't get, so it is an attracting force. We could fight cartels with guns and enforcers, leading to ramped up violence all around and making a health issue a dangerous violent criminal one that decreases harm reduction and increases addiction, production issues and safety issues. Or to get at the root cause, we could fight cartels by ending the drug war taking away their massive hundreds of billions of annual black market funds, which gives them power of nation states over decades, and shift that to the legal market to help regulate and make recreational/health uses safer with harm reduction and addition support, as well as providing economic plans to give people a positive legal market choice. Unfortunately we choose wrong largely because of propaganda by the military and prison industrial complexes and the incessant pressing haphazard decisions to blame, fight and go to war with the human condition when health/medical/personal freedom matters are criminalized. We go to war on everything as a solution to peace and quality of life... surveillance state comes from that same corrupted/short-term thinking place. The surveillance state has been going on for decades now in all major countries, there probably isn't much actual detective or investigative work even being done anymore, nor a case by case analysis for justification of these methods, just massive privacy breaches and lots of data noise. Smart criminals and corporate espionage will learn how to use that lack of investigative skill and manipulate the surveillance data, or gain access to it to it and dominate.

mirimir 7y ago

Well, there is the fact that he's a white dude. And makes no attempt to alter his appearance. And, I gather, started from a known location.

bhelkey 7y ago
The local government is incentivised to catch the reporter quickly to showcase their capabilities. The reporter is incentivised to be caught quickly to make a more compelling story.

namelosw 7y ago

Not defending surveillance at all. But I want to mention that China's CCTV network is an important part of the legal improvement on self-defense. From ancient time, the law in most dynasties strongly discourages self-defense because it's unjudgeable most of the cases. And it also could be a tool of murdering. Modern China pretty much inherited this tradition. Although the self-defense is defined in the law just like most countries, in practice it's way too strict almost like non-existence for tens of years. Until last year, a famous case[0] causes massive debate across the country, and finally justified as self-defense. The main reason behind this is the massive surveillance network makes legal apartments confident enough to judge. [0]: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201809/03/WS5b8c877ea310add14f38926c.html http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201809/03/WS5b8c877ea310add14...

turk73 7y ago
What bs. The US has had decent self defense law for generations without the need for mass surveillance. The more I see of China the more I think no effing way I want a 'one-size-fits-all' global world based on their standards. I might as well die in a world war because I would rather poke them in the eye versus live like that.