The simulation, presented at an industry fair in China, offered a rare look at a system that now peers into nearly every corner of Xinjiang, the troubled region where Kashgar is located.
This is the vision of high-tech surveillance — precise, all-seeing, infallible — that China’s leaders are investing billions of dollars in every year, making Xinjiang an incubator for increasingly intrusive policing systems that could spread across the country and beyond. …
The system taps into networks of neighborhood informants; tracks individuals and analyzes their behavior; tries to anticipate potential crime, protest or violence; and then recommends which security forces to deploy, the company said.
New York Times
On the screen during the demonstration was a slogan: “If someone exists, there will be traces, and if there are connections, there will be information.”
Remember when universities were about academic freedom? How is this different in principle, from the hate speech filters being developed with the help of data fusion? Or is it just a matter of degree, a question of how far you twist the dial?
One of the most interesting features of the Chinese system is it allows authorities to create “virtual cages”. In an IOT world you credit card, phone, car etc can automatically stop working or flag you should you stray from the authorized zone.
Perhaps if we don’t have coarse-grained walls enclosing nations we will wind up with fine grained walls built around individuals. We will live in a world “without borders” but the drone will flag you if you try to enter any locality without the right digital token.
Escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing are wiping billions from the net worth of China’s richest surveillance tycoons.
The billionaires behind Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co. have watched their combined fortunes sink by more than $8 billion since March 2018 as shares of both companies sank on speculation of potential U.S. sanctions. The losses deepened on Wednesday after reports that Donald Trump’s administration is considering blacklisting the surveillance giants, in part because of their alleged role in human rights violations
Bloomberg