I watched two DW documentaries on coronavirus in China[0][1] -- [1] is now private but you can see what the page looked like on the wayback machine[2]. What I r

I watched two DW documentaries on coronavirus in China[0][1] -- [1] is now private but you can see what the page looked like on the wayback machine[2]. What I remember from one of the videos (not sure which) was that they had facial recognition with masks working, they discussed it and there was some b-roll of facial recognition cameras set up inside a mall(?) and other places. The other commenters who have noted that there are lots more variables involved (height, gait, etc) are also right of course. I think China is a world leader in this field of technology, and I fully expect them to have solved this, for better or (almost certainly) for worse. Imagine if you had an organization with virtually unlimited local currency willing to pay researchers/smarter-than-average/average programmers to solve the who-is-that-in-this-picture problem, but also you had no regulation to answer to with regards to personal privacy and/or data access ("it's for national security" gets you close to no oversight in western nations, but not quite China-level). Consider the problem mostly solved. Even if it wasn't, the fact that just about every citizen carries a cell tower/GPS beacon with them should be enough to help narrow down the search space dramatically, even if your algorithm/methods were dogshit (it isn't). China has created a real life 1984, and tech helped them get here. I don't know whose (including me) conscience that's supposed to be on but just putting it out there. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K3fy5eKeuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K3fy5eKeuM [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm92Rd262qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm92Rd262qQ [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm92Rd262qQ https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.youtube.com/watch?...