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Huawei patent mentions use of Uighur-spotting tech

• choonway 6y ago
  Well, the patent also mentions that it can spot Han people. Apparently it cannot discriminate between Caucasians / Indians and Africans. There needs to be work done there. :P
• rubatuga 6y ago
  In other news, Huawei has succeeded in training the most accurate model to spot the word Uighur in PDFs.
• dgellow 6y ago
  In case you’re wondering what is happening with Uighur in China, please read this recent piece: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/uighur-xinjiang-re-education-camp-china-gulbahar-haitiwaji https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/uighur-xinjian...
  • 7373737373 6y ago
    https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ Fuck these fascists
    • lightgreen 6y ago
      > Fuck these fascists Not far from where I live there's China embassy. 24 hours a day 7 days a week next to the embassy there's a guy sitting, just outside during summer and inside a tent during winter, and there's table with leaflets nearby. That guy constantly reminds all the people visiting China embassy about persecution of Falun Gong (which I did not know about until I encountered him). That guy is helping. You, cursing people who are not here in the place where everybody agrees with you, are not.
      • 7373737373 6y ago
        Tell me what I can do These values seem to be incompatible with the aims and actions of the Chinese (system of) government.
        • lightgreen 6y ago
          This might sound like a joke, but I believe spreading that info about Uyghurs to your friends in social networks might be the first thing to do. Western governments do nothing about this situation because voters do not ask/pressure them, which is in turn, because most western citizens don't really know (I suppose) how bad is the situation with human rights in China.
          • 7373737373 6y ago
            Most people I know have already heard about it. But there is no attention nor outrage. Which specific measures could (a community of) governments take to incentivize or enforce the rights declared in this document?
            • riffraff 6y ago
              impose tariffs on imports derived from violations of these rights, or restrict sales of products sourced from companies that use forced work, for example.
          • itsthefnlacctdn 6y ago
            I suggest we focus on our own problems and lead by example. Sanctions and dropping bombs only hurts the common man. Let's clean up our own incarceration problems before we stick our nose in others' business, at least we won't come off as hypocrites.
      • redis_mlc 6y ago
        Falun Gong has gained an enormous amount of mindshare and respect through their network of Youtube channels and early jump on reporting on the CCP over the past 10 years. Youtube channel network: Search for "NTD" and click on Channels Newspaper: Epoch Times They're the primary source of information on the CCP today. To understand how credible they are, the CCP regularly sends their US reporters death threats.
    • Aqua 6y ago
      I mean, I share your sentiment even if it doesn't add value to the conversation, but they are communists, it's quite the opposite of fascism and equally as or more evil.
      • j0ba 6y ago
        They are not at all mutually exclusive. Unless you believe the recent edits on wikipedia.
        • shiftingleft 6y ago
          Which recent edits?
      • shiftingleft 6y ago
        China is a capitalist state - its economy is based on corporate profit. If the word communism has any meaning it cannot apply to China. I can't say for sure, whether China is fascist, as I don't know whether they are ultranationalist. However, they definitely are authoritarian and are suppressing and murdering minorities or political opponents.
        • enaaem 6y ago
          Under central planning tens of millions of people died of starvation. Their economy has vastly improved after reforms.
          • shiftingleft 6y ago
            I agree, that the current economic situation is likely much better for almost everyone in China. I'm not so certain, however, that the previous failures can be directly attributed to central planning? It seems officials were too afraid to come forward about issues regarding food production, due to repercussions of admitting failure. But this might not be inherent to central planning: the authoritarian nature of the state, punishments for admitting failure and perverse incentives causing officials to report success likely were more direct precursors of this outcome. I would love to hear other opinions on this.
    • lmilcin 6y ago
      I can understand the sentiment, but this is HN and not Parler or Twitter. If you have nothing intelligent to add to the discussion better stay silent. This language is not welcome here.
      • 7373737373 6y ago
        I deeply apologize for having strong feelings about people being tortured, abducted, brainwashed and forcibly sterilized. My bad.
        • koheripbal 6y ago
          You're missing the point. Comments here need to add something to the conversation for the rest of us. Your emotions do not benefit anyone/anything. If you're looking for a place to vent your emotions, other social media sites are a better fit - reddit, twitter, facebook, etc...
          • 7373737373 6y ago
            Good, let me tell you some unemotional things, facts, if you will: Almost every article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is violated here by the Chinese Government. The legal system in China is extremely new. Even stuff like contract law has only existed since the 1990s and onwards. The Chinese constitution foresees no separation of powers, the court system is not independent, it is under the influence of the party. Their Constitution states: > Article 4 All nationalities in the People’s Republic of China are equal. The State protects the lawful rights and interests of the minority nationalities and upholds and develops a relationship of equality, unity and mutual assistance among all of China’s nationalities. Discrimination against and oppression of any nationality are prohibited; any act which undermines the unity of the nationalities or instigates division is prohibited. > The State assists areas inhabited by minority nationalities in accelerating their economic and cultural development according to the characteristics and needs of the various minority nationalities. > Regional autonomy is practised in areas where people of minority nationalities live in concentrated communities; in these areas organs of self-government are established to exercise the power of autonomy. All national autonomous areas are integral parts of the People’s Republic of China. > All nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages and to preserve or reform their own folkways and customs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
• pdevr 6y ago
  This technology is like a knife. Depending on who wields it, the result can be awesome or awful. Let us hope it is mostly the former.
  • drawfloat 6y ago
    What positive can come from race detection technology?
    • powerapple 6y ago
      I read the documentation, it is an attribute identification system. Say you want to search for a 'white male wearing red shirt and nike shoes', so the attribute is 'white', 'male', red shirt', 'nike shoes'. The system identifies all these attributes from recordings and find images matching the description.
      • Hamuko 6y ago
        I still don't understand the upside.
        • powerapple 6y ago
          I guess I am used to think from technical point of view. Think the upside this way: say a system can track either a Chinese spy or Capitol Hill mob and get him arrested in 30 seconds. joke aside, yes, I think the downside is massive (any kind of facial recognition). I believe this is inline with the development of transportation technologies. We would never need things like this when people are not moving so fast. We have had the ability to track people in the past.
        • OJFord 6y ago
          Not many people would object to police manually trawling through CCTV after a break-in to look for the 'white male wearing a red shirt and Nike shoes' that a witness described; so the upside I suppose is efficiency of an existing process?
      • 6y ago
• j0ba 6y ago
  With all the moral outrage recently, I assume Amazon will stop carrying Huawei phones until the CCP stops putting Uyghurs in concentration camps, amirite?
  • PradeetPatel 6y ago
    It wouldn't be a sound business move, nor would it generate additional revenue from the positive PR. It's been established that China is a key stakeholder in the economy of many nations, and it would be foolish to mismanage that relationship imo.
• powerapple 6y ago
  Talk to your government wherever you are to make facial/gender/racial identification illegal in any technology, so it is not patentable
  • BelenusMordred 6y ago
    Make sure to contact them on their microsoft365gov account hosted on Azure too: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/face/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... What an absolute joke, literally every government on the planet is chomping at the bit for this stuff and already openly does it apart from the race stuff which most certainly happens behind the scenes. What we need is better governments not better companies allowed to do such things.
    • boramalper 6y ago
      > Make sure to contact them on their microsoft365gov account hosted on Azure too This looks like a failed attempt at whataboutism: What does Microsoft’s product have to do with racial and/or ethnic spotting?
      • BelenusMordred 6y ago
        They have literally admitted that government agencies use their tech for racial profiling. May I suggest a search engine here?
        • boramalper 6y ago
          The onus is on you, links please?
  • e7ehdud8 6y ago
    What's with all the dogwhistles? Just call it facial recognition. The extra bait is just going to derail the conversation into arguments about the role race and gender actually play in the system.
• wombatmobile 6y ago
  “The basic premise of a free society is that you shouldn’t be subject to tracking by the government without suspicion of wrongdoing. You are presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Shankar Narayan, technology and liberty project director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “The widespread use of face surveillance flips the premise of freedom on its head and you start becoming a society where everyone is tracked no matter what they do all the time.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-israeli-firm-surveils-west-bank-palestinians-n1072116 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-isra...
  • peytn 6y ago
    Seems like that principle would be easy to circumvent by simply letting private companies do the tracking and punishing in return for favorable treatment by the government.
  • silexia 6y ago
    China is becoming a horrifying totalitarian state that uses tech to crush opposition. I am afraid that the advances in weaponry and surveillance have rendered a revolution by the oppressed impossible. It was difficult for freedom to be established against tyranny in bygone centuries; even the US required the intervention of France and Spain to win its freedom. Now, it will be only maybe doable with outside help... But with the rising populist and nationalist tides, this is unlikely.
    • fluffy87 6y ago
      The US was and probably still is doing the same thing as China with its domestic surveillance programs. They just have a better marketing / PR department about it. But don’t be mistaken, if you speak against this in the US, you’ll commit suicide, or spend the rest of your life in prison or in exile as a traitor.
      • hker 6y ago
        > They just have a better marketing / PR department about it. The fact that opposing views could be brought into public discourse, not silenced or censored in QQ or Weibo, makes a huge difference. It is not just marketing or PR. It is allowing the civil society to take part in public discourse, much like the recent debate on censoring Donald Trump. > if you speak against this in the US, you’ll commit suicide Not to the same extent in China, far from it.
• deleteme955 6y ago
  This is basic image recognition and of course corporate would try to patent anything. The same technology could be used to check if corporations have enough POC or women in boards etc. And it would be applauded. Why get surprised when it's used for nefarious stuff?
  • comfyinnernet 6y ago
    Facial recognition software to count board members? Would that be applauded?
• caidehen 6y ago
  I would like to provide some thoughts from crossing side, as Chinese. I hope you guys be peaceful if an argument is inevitable. This is only my view and it definitely is biased. I have never lived in a free country. If my visa gets approved this year, I will go to a graduate school to get my master degree in the USA this fall. 1.These kinds of systems have been used by the Chinese government for many years. Being tracked is not even a big deal in our lives. The big deal is that the communication applications(QQ, Wechat) are dominated by one company(Tencent) and I can calculate it out with my toe that they share every word I said, every picture I posted with the government. They work with the government and the government promises Tencent is the only one allowed to provide communication applications in China. I have been kicked out of chat groups many times since I said something inappropriate. My friends and family also warned me not to talk about those topics. Many people have been put in jail because of this. Tencent also invested companies outside China, like Reddit, Epic Games. 2. I saw Falun Gong mentioned in this thread. From what I know and experienced, Falun Gong is a dangerous cult. When I was in high school, one time I broke my leg and I had to go to see a doctor. On the road a woman approached me and tried to convince me that doctor is not helpful, Falun Gong would be better. They printed many pamphlets, throw them into your home at night, sometimes there would even be a disk. They print their slogan on cash. That was about ten years ago when I was in a small town. And they mostly activate in those small towns and try to recruit middle-aged women. I also noticed them running many websites and newsagents now in foreign countries, from what I see, most contents on their websites are much worse than FOX news. IMO, the gov have done some things wrong or even terrible when to expel it, but to expel it is not wrong. They are dangerous, you are warned. 3. People in Xinjiang are under suppression, but that is far from Fascism. There are movements pushed by the government to incorporate minorities. These movements are stronger than previous years recently, and sometimes they might even be forced. These movements, from different perspectives, would seem different. But to summarize, it's like that the government says: just give up your religion and don't fight against us, and we will make sure you have a comfortable life. What is included in this comfortable life is a small amount of subsidy every month, a job if you want, a small house, free college for the next generation. The minorities are at advantage points in society from my view, if they are willing to give up religious belief and obey(actually most minorities born after 90s do not hold religious beliefs anymore since these movements have been undertaken for many years). One of my roommates back in university is a minority, when the university calculates his score in GaoKao(SAT in the USA?), they have to add 20 to it. The total score is 750. Minorities in this society also have another advantage, from what I know, local governments do not have jurisdiction over minorities, which means, say, if I fight with one guy from Xinjiang, I would get in jail and he would be sent back to Xinjiang. Some guys from Xinjiang used to take advantage of this, they would put up a small stall to sell dessert, if you get close and ask them how much, they would cut a piece off and ask you to buy it, if you don't buy, several other guys would approach and threaten you. Well, you can't fight as I said, you have to pay some money. In recent years I heard fewer stories like this. Most guys from Xinjiang are OK, one restaurant nearby run by several people from Xinjiang have the best Kebab I have ever known. links: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B3%95%E8%BD%AE%E5%8A%9F#%E9%95%87%E5%8E%8B%E5%8E%9F%E5%9B%A0%E6%8E%A2%E8%AE%A8 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B3%95%E8%BD%AE%E5%8A%9F#%E... https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%87%E7%B3%95%E5%85%9A https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%87%E7%B3%95%E5%85%9A http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_zt/moe_357/jyzt_2020n/2020_zt12/baodao/202006/t20200616_466276.html#:~:text=%E4%B8%80%E6%98%AF%E7%83%88%E5%A3%AB%E5%AD%90%E5%A5%B3%EF%BC%8C%E5%A2%9E%E5%8A%A0,%E8%80%83%E7%94%9F%EF%BC%8C%E5%A2%9E%E5%8A%A010%E5%88%86%E6%8A%95%E6%A1%A3%E3%80%82 http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_zt/moe_357/jyzt_2020n/2020...
• RavlaAlvar 6y ago
  FYI: If you search with Chinese in google, you can actually find lots of Chinese government tender from the official government website that request for the cctv system with the ability to recognise Uyghur.
• ferest 6y ago
  a different view it's a 26 page with (almost) all words, and it mentions uighur (as well as han) once in one place and used as example, and at the same example it mentions gender and age as factors. Yet BBC is "creating" a horrible headline. By this definitation all patents used by car auto pilot feature that could enhance people (in particular colored people) detection, is a human right voilation