China is building a vast civilian surveillance network

From Business Insider.com (Apr. 29):

China is setting up a vast surveillance system that tracks every single one of its 1.4 billion citizens — from using facial recognition to name and shame jaywalkers, to forcing people to download apps that can access all the photos on their smartphones.

The growth of China's surveillance technology comes as the state rolls out an enormous "social credit system" that ranks citizens based on their behaviour, and doles out rewards and punishments depending on their scores.

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1. Using facial recognition technology that can pick people out of massive crowds.

At least 16 cities, municipalities, and provinces across China have already started using a facial recognition system that can scan the country's entire 1.4 billion-strong population — with 99.8% accuracy, Chinese state media reported.

China's facial recognition surveillance has already proven to be eerily effective: Police in Nanchang, southeastern China, managed to locate and arrest a wanted suspect out of a 60,000-person pop concert earlier this month, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

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2. Getting group chat admins to spy on people.

China holds people criminally liable for content posted in any group chat they initiate on messaging apps. The regulation applies even to private and encrypted apps, such as WhatsApp.

The government also requires tech companies to monitor and keep records of conversations for six months, and report any illegal activity to authorities.

3. Forcing citizens to download apps that allow the government to monitor their cell phone photos and videos.

The government has forced Uighurs, an ethnic minority in western China, to download an app that scans photos, videos, audio files, ebooks, and other documents, the US-government funded Open Technology Fund said.

The app, named 浄网 (pronounced "jingwang" in Mandarin Chinese, and literally means "cleansing the web"), extracts information including the phone number and model, and scours through its files, the Open Technology Fund reported.

It also warns users to delete files it deems dangerous and sends information about those files to an outside server.  [read more]

Talk about Big Brother watching you! George Orwell would be impressed.

The other ways that China is monitoring its citizens are:

1. Watching how people shop online.
2. Having law enforcement officers wear special glasses to identify people in crowded places, like streets and train stations.
3. Installing 'robot police' in train stations that scan people's faces and match those of wanted fugitives — like this one in Zhengzhou, central China.
4. Using facial recognition technology to root out jaywalkers.
5. Stopping pedestrians at random to check their phones.
6. Tracking people's social media posts, which can be linked to the user's family and location.
7. Building predictive software to aggregate data about people — without their knowledge — and flag those they consider threatening.