China To Deploy World's Largest People Tracking Network 368
hackingbear writes "News.com reports that China is building the largest and most sophisticated people-tracking network in the world, all to track citizens in the city of Shenzhen. This network utilizes 20,000 intelligent digital cameras and RFID cards to keep track of the 12.4 million people living in the Southern port city. The key to the system is the new residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips. 'Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.' While I lived in Shenzhen, there indeed were (and still are) plenty of crimes. One of my friend who lived at the 20th floor of a condo building in a nice neighborhood saw an intruder in the middle of one night while he was sleeping. Still, this will clearly raise the fear of human rights abuses. And ... 'one of the most startling aspects of this plan is that this project is mostly made possible by an American company with solid venture fundings.'"
Re:Go China! (Score:3, Informative)
That's not to say we won't have a problem in the future. But as of right now I'm not too worried about it in NYC.
Re:People Tracking & RFID (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think many Americans carry their passports around - if they even have one. Even if they did, the passport is constructed so that you can't read the RFID chip when it is closed.
Government tracking religion and ethnicity? Bad (Score:3, Informative)
But for the most part, tracking ethnicity is a spectacularly bad idea, and tracking religion is not only worse but also much less reliable because it's not a constant. Ignore the questions of whether your mom thinks you're still a good Catholic and can look up whether you've shown up at Mass lately or see that you visited the Zendo down the street or guess about that party on Solstice (or, ahem, May Day) where most of your friends are pagans... (and at least the database won't let your mom see whether you're gay, probably because in China that's Just Not Talked About.)
Ethnic cleansing is a lot easier if you've got a database saying where all the members of Ethnic Group X live in your town*. And if you don't want to hire Jews, you've got a database that says who they are. And it's much easier to get the no-fly list right when you can tell if somebody named Malik Muhammed is African-American (ok, he's just one of Those People, and make sure to give him the kosher airline meal) or Arab (he goes on the list.) I'm sure China has their equivalent issues about which ethnicities get privileges and which don't, even outside of special provinces like Tibet.
And at least it's just China - in most of the Moslem countries, if you weren't born a Moslem, that's usually ok, though you might have to pay a tax, but if you were born a Moslem and you've converted to other religions, Sharia says you have to either convert back or die, and even in the more moderate countries like Egypt, they'll throw ex-Moslems in jail for preaching the wrong religion, as happened to friends-of-friends of mine back in the 80s. In some countries they've got Sunni-vs-Shia issues that are better off not having database support, and I don't know what happens if you convert to another branch of Islam such as Sufiism. And the Baha'i also seem to be a special always-infidel case.
* I get to mention the ethnic-cleansing-rounding-up-Ethnic-Group-X example without triggering Godwin's Law this time - one of the people at the party I was at last night was talking about how he didn't know two of his grandparents because they didn't make it back from the Japanese-American internment camps during the war (he wasn't doing a political rant - he was dealing with his aging mother's house, where there's still stuff of his other grandmother's as well.) One of the joys of living in California is the wide variety of people you get to be with - most of the examples I gave above are for people I've seen recently, though a few were people I hadn't seen in a while and one or two were from recent news.
* And the one person I've known who *was* a potential suicide bomber is presumably not on the no-fly list; he was a college student in Japan during the war, and was considering volunteering to be a kamikaze pilot, but one of his professors talked him out of it. I worked for him about 30 years ago - his war history didn't stop him from having a US security clearance. (Do I still get didn't-trigger-Godwin's-Law credit if I mention the tattoo his boss had on his arm? Probably not. )
Re:People Tracking & RFID (Score:3, Informative)
Re:People Tracking & RFID (Score:3, Informative)
Whether they can be individually zeroed in on is another matter, but GPS would be far more accurate than triangulation.
Re:Catch 22? (Score:3, Informative)
I seem to remember that a lot of the "lesser crimes" (such as traffic offenses etc.) are solved, while the more serious crimes (robbery, murder, grand theft auto, etc) are virtually unchanged - and in some areas significantly higher than before cameras were installed.
Criminals simply seem to adjust to the new rules of the game. While authorities are all but drowning in the sheer mass of information and video they are collecting.
- Jesper