All these reports have the feelings of small rumblings or rumors of purges and famines that leaked out of the Soviet Union in the 30’s. The dismissal of all of them due to China’s size and growth really strengthens the analogy too.<p>Privacy is important because basically we all are, at least once a day, committing some kind of crime. I mean the definition for loitering is so broad that alone gets most people.<p>The ad-tech companies of the world think they are criticized now, but they have no idea the judgment history will render for some of the attitudes and practices that have been promoted regarding data and privacy. Some of this stuff is as naive as Charles Lindbergh helping the Luftwaffe because he believed airplanes would connect all the peoples of the world and promote global peace. What is it with “connecting people” and really terrible ideas?<p>All totalitarian governments, not being very innovative, have thrived off of inventions that have been developed elsewhere and have been bearable, and then mutated into unrecognizable monsters under them.
I get why human rights orgs would want to speak against this technology, from a Western philosophy and law perspective.<p>China does not have the same philosophical or legal lineage. They will have to find out on their own whether the cons outweigh the pros.<p>Theoretically, if the system is not corrupted by misinformation (false or incomplete information), it has the potential to keep the streets free of wanted criminals --which is a noble goal. The question is whether keeping criminals off the streets will trample on innocent people's rights and if so whether the general Chinese public would accept that deal.<p>That said, I can see this technology also taking off in some public areas in the West --ports of entry, for example.<p>I also think human rights orgs also are concerned that China might show enough effective use of the tech that states outside Asia will want to at least trial it out.
TFA: "The app brings up the (scanned person's) vital
information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address (..), the address of the hotel where they are staying and information related to their internet usage."<p>Wow. So just by looking at you, they can see how often you visit Hacker News - or what else.<p>Scary as.
Rob Lake's comment is pretty spot on (I'm taking the liberty to repost w/o his authorization):<p>""The app brings up the suspect’s vital information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address." Presumably version 2 of the app will also pop up the person's social credit score."<p>That being said, this will definitely come to the west sooner or later. I mean, doesn't London already have cameras at every street corner for instance ?
Face recognition exists, is becoming trivial and this has implications.<p>I saw a demo of sorts about 6 years ago, and heard rumors of various research projects @ FB. Banner tracking in malls that link banner "views" to "conversions" using a camera armed cash registers. Hi-res cameras on streets that collect data like wildlife tracking collars. A stadium cam that can id all the people at a match. A smart building that knows who's inside it & where. Casino cams that dispatch cocktails waitresses to VIPs wherever they are. Casinos've been using face recognition since early days, for persona non grata identification. Coffee shop loyalty stamps. School attendance. Prison monitoring, with relationship graphs and ML conspiracy detection. Traffic Analytics....<p>There are a ton of applications, commercial, security, intelligence or general nosiness. IMO, the best way of thinking about face recognition is: Google Analytics will now work for physical reality.<p>All this stuff just exists. FB (and many others) have an enormous, proprietary set of tagged photos. You could probably create your own set just scraping social media and google image search. Some applications don't even need it. Face recognition works. Cameras are high-res & cheap. The software is fast. Customers want it. It will happen.<p>We (our generation) has not shown the political will (or competence) required to create new rights and limitations on power sufficient to moderate this kind of technology, thus far. The only thing preventing wide-scale & unlimited use is creepiness feelings and that is temporary.<p>Putting the technology onto AR robocop glasses is just an illustrative way of demonstrating implications. If this is well implemented, every police force will want it in some form. Fugitives are needles-in-haystacks and I suspect this will turn up a ton of them. It's probably a genuinely useful police tool, unlike the dragnet digital snooping they do.
Serious question/statement looking for an answer here—I don’t understand why every time an article along the line of this gets attention it makes me wonder if anyone out there is working on two things:<p>1. Educating the general population how the latest technologies can/are being used to affect their privacy<p>2. Working hard to be an independent, trustworthy part that scrutinises the government<p>I honestly don’t understand the general attitude of most of the comments on articles like this, particular when you are not living in a country where censorship is “okay”.<p>In an ideal society (in my opinion) the government would act in the best interest of the society and the government is scrutinised by a well-informed population. This is certainly <i>not</i> what is happening in most, if not all, countries; but seeing some of the comments on HN repeatedly that don’t go beyond “scary as” or “this is not okay” is quite disappointing and makes me wonder where else I should look for reasonable opinions sometimes.<p>Have we not learn anything from storeis about govermental mass surveillance programs in recent years? How about perhaps we should all sit down, think, and set standards for how to protect everyone while setting encforcabke standards for what is an isn’t okay?
Has anyone played with Baidou`s Face Ai Products , I cant read Mandrin and The site is impossible to navigate with google transelate.@ <a href="http://ai.baidu.com/tech/face" rel="nofollow">http://ai.baidu.com/tech/face</a>
Would really appreciate a pointer to a independent performance eval of the same .
>the newest use of facial recognition technology that has drawn concerns among human rights groups<p>why are they getting up in arms about this? networked cameras with facial recognition have been around for years. what's so different about mounting it on a police officer's head?
Remarkably close form factor to Glass, but definitely not something Google would be participating in. Glass Enterprise Edition is much sleeker, this has a much more boxed-off front. Looks like they may be using the same projector-style display as Glass, but it's covered so that an onlooker can't see if it's displaying anything or not.<p>Fairly thick tether cable, seems thicker than you'd need for just power, unlikely it operates standalone. Could be like a USB-C cable, maybe, to run all the power, display, and camera data to another unit on her person?
According to Chinese news for the same event, the vendor is <a href="http://www.llvision.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.llvision.com/</a><p>The product and the logo look so similar to google glass though. Good product and use case from technical perspective.
Why is this not evoking a stronger response from the public? Or globally? Mass surveillance has always been a troubling possibility with computer vision.<p>I remember a client who approached us a few years ago to develop software to surveil his employees in departmental store (containing no particularly special commodity). To track his employees 24-7. We refused to take up the project. I can't believe we are on the way to implement to the same idea at this large a scale!<p>No matter what the short term benefits are, I believe the long term effects are going to be very very unpleasant. Orwell's world doesn't seem too far off.
> The system is part of China’s efforts to build a digital surveillance system able to use a variety of biometric data — from photos and iris scans to fingerprints — to keep close tabs on the movements of the entire population.<p>Currently in some country people pay to live in cities or neighborhood with better security theatre. I can imagine 50 years from now when you'll be recorded and traced everywhere people will pay for the privilege of living in closed neighborhood with no sensor inside.
While the tech is interesting, I'd like to know the security of the backend system and the data access system. Poor security allowing it to be manipulated by others could make it a powerful tool for all sorts of criminals or foreign governments. Like Stalin said, its not who votes that matters, its who counts the votes. Likewise the recognition might be perfect but the data is fake.
Leading the way in totalitarianism! One thing I'm glad the West is not a leader in...<p>Just a http call away from "enemy of the state".
Good, technology like this is good. Worrying about potential misuse of this technology is misplaced worry. Our concern is better placed on forming governments that will use this technology for the common good (whatever that is determined to be) than on the availability of the technology itself.<p>It's not about the technology.<p>It's about the will of the government.<p>Think about all the horrendous evils rendered upon the citizenry of early nations and empires in the distant past. No advanced technology there. Just a twisted view of right and wrong.<p>What this tells us is that regardless of what technology is available, a good government will do good, and an evil government will do evil. That really goes for any entity. You name it.
I think we romanticize "being on the lamb". For the 99.999% of the time, if someone is a "wanted man", it's much better for society if he is apprehended. I don't see this as a threat.<p>If, however, every innocent person were tracked, and crimes were generated based on observations ( like souped up red-light cameras for every imaginable crime ), and charges were created automatically ( and algorithmically ), that would suck. Or, it would make us realize most laws suck and we'd remove them.
Idea for a Black Mirror episode (from the past):<p>In the future, people of the internet are unable to write about new technology without resorting to increasingly tiresome, lazy and spurious references to a popular British Twilight Zone remake.
I'm sorry, I do not understand the alarmist tone.<p>Yes, in many cases the uses of tech in China are disturbing (like the supposedly planned social credit system).<p>But this case? It's the job of the police to find people. Facial recognition helps it (although, I suspect, it won't be as flawless as advertised). How is it functionally different from the recognition tech in airports? Because the cops look scarier?