From [1]: Chinese surveillance chiefs are testing a facial-recognition system that alerts authorities when targets stray more than 300 metres from their home or workplace, as part of a surveillance push that critics say has transformed the country’s western fringes into a high-tech police state.
From [1]: “A system like this is obviously well-suited to controlling people,” Jim Harper, a counter-terrorism specialist and former US homeland security official was quoted as saying. “‘Papers, please’ was the symbol of living under tyranny in the past. Now, government officials don’t need to ask.”
From [1]: “They are combining all of these things to create, essentially, a total police state,” said William Nee, a China campaigner at Amnesty International.
From [1]: “People should really pay attention to this because they could easily use the same tools of surveillance elsewhere in China, or for export. A lot of these companies will naturally want to grow their businesses and sell this technology to other authoritarian countries, or even democracies, that are looking for the same tools of control.”
From [5]: “Employees’ brain waves are reportedly being monitored in factories, state-owned enterprises, and the military across China. … Employers use this ’emotional surveillance technology’ by then tweaking workflows, including employee placement and breaks, to increase productivity and profits.”
From [9]: “Called ‘a map of deadbeat debtors’, the program allows users to find out whether there are any debtors within 500 meters. The debtor’s information is available to check in the program, making it easier for people to whistle-blow on debtors capable of paying their debts.”
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From [8]: The Guardian interview with Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:
“Surveillance capitalism,” she writes, “unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioural surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behaviour.”
Links:
- [1] China testing facial-recognition surveillance system in Xinjiang – report
- [2] The Guardian view on surveillance in China: Big Brother is watching
- [3] China extends surveillance into supermarkets, cinemas and classrooms
- [4] Er is meer mis met de sleepwet dan alleen het sleepnet
- [5] China is monitoring employees’ brain waves and emotions — and the technology boosted one company’s profits by $417 million
- [6] Chinese school installs facial-recognition cameras to ensure pupils pay attention in class
- [7] Facial Recognition to Soon Be Introduced to Beijing Subway Lines
- [8] ‘The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
- [9] Hebei court unveils program to expose deadbeat debtors
