China To Deploy World's Largest People Tracking Network

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.'"

So...

[MacDork]

They're getting social security cards. How nice.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This is why I am scared

[saibot834]

I live in Germany and we still got democracy here, but who guaranties me that this will be like that forever? China's use of total surveillance should be a warning to us all, what can happen too us, too.

People always say: 'I have nothing to hide, so I am not against surveillance'. They don't realize that this might change.

Re:Go China!

[haluness]

Yet if this were done in NYC or London, there would be a string of posts condemning such action?

Frankly, wherever something like this happens, it's something to be wary of. Given China's track record I don't think there doing it just for the fun of it.

Re:Go China!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is just the test market

new york city and london will have it soon enough

It's going this way...

[Token_Internet_Girl]

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." - Orwell

Re:Go China!

[ShieldW0lf]

The problem with NYC and London is that they inflate the privacy fears among the population, while simultaneously inflating the mad bomber fears among the population, and end up leaving the population with the worst of both worlds...

Spy cameras everywhere, lots of evidence for selective enforcement should that be convenient to anyone in power, but instead of having everyone looking out for each other with this newfound access to timely information, it's just collected and stored to be used as a weapon against individuals later.

The people who live in NYC and London should be demanding that all footage from those cameras be publicly accessible, instantly and indefinitely. They should be willing to kill for it if necessary, because they will be utterly ruled by it if they don't.

Stalin himself never had it so good.

Re:Go China!

[ShieldW0lf]

Parents could find the nerdy kid instantly... authorities would know inconclusively about the bully and what he's been doing, child molesters and stalkers wouldn't be able to stalk anyone undetected, ever, and old dishonourable scumbags wouldn't be able to cheat on their wives and steal the younger generations women.

Sounds awesome. Unless you're a scumbag, which you've most likely become if you managed to survive several decades in this corrupt world we live in...

Re:personal reproductive history

[jez9999]

China's "one child" policy is about the only thing their government got right. Human overpopulation is the elephant in the room, and I actually applaud them for standing up and doing something to stop it there.

The path to world slavery

[frup]

1) Remove oponents. (Tick)
2) Dumb down the population (remove the individual). (Tick)
3) Monitor & Track. (Tick)
4) Step 1.
5) Use data to make Step 2 more effective.
6) Step 3.
7) MIND CONTROL.

Now you and your friends live in luxury with 6 billion slaves at your dispense. What a warm fuzzy feeling :).

Re:Just curious

[thegrassyknowl]

but what kind of infrastructure does

It doesn't take much people to monitor a system like this at all. Computers do most of the screening work to point out the small selection of people who deserve further manual investigation. The quality of the algorithms is becoming such that people will eventually not be required to intervene. The biggest problem is finding space for all the computers and data storage.

I don't think Americans would stand for it.

Americans will stand for anything. Somebody will tell them that it is a way of reducing petty crime, protecting the children, making paying for groceries easier, etc. Nowhere will it be mentioned that the entire reason for the system is to track your asses. The dumb cattle majority of people there (and around the world) will buy the lies hook, line and sinker. the masses will only work out that it's about tracking their asses when it's too late to do anything about it.

Re:This is why I am scared

[garcia]

Do you really think people who say that would change their minds as long as the government could cite some perceived improvements in security as justification for the extra surveillence? I honestly don't think they would. *THAT'S* what's scary.

No, what's scary is that we sit in the United States talking about saving freedom by fighting terrorists and their supporters in the Middle East when we have an entire country like China who openly tracks and oppresses their people but we stand idly by and let their money pay for our war on the wrong tyrannies. I could go on to say the same thing about Brittan, the United States itself, etc but I won't bother, I'm preaching to the choir.

What is even more scary is that here in the US, and I'm just as much at fault as anyone I chastise, we are letting more and more occur without standing up for what our country was founded on. We call the true freedom fights protesters instead of patriots. We don't rise up in huge numbers against one of the most evil, horrifying, and ironic Presidents that has ever graced our White House. We sit here on Slashdot, huddled around in our offices and our homes, and talk about serious change by use of our free and democratic process but watch as the President threatens to keep our lawmakers in session past their beloved vacation unless they allow him to spy on Americans and their friends and family some more. Even if they had ignored his bullshit, he would have just passed an Executive Order stating he could do it anyway all while continuing to use precious "Homeland Security" resources finding the source of the leak so that he could jail them indefinitly as a terrorist or traitor while he's the one that is by far the leading example. So much for democracy...

We're all a bunch of fucking pussies and that's what's scary.

Huge correction to the title

[Spiked_Three]

China is deploying the worlds largest 'known' people tracking system. There are plenty of secret ones just as big already deployed.

Re:Catch 22?

[nagora]

which is worse, crime or total surveillance

That's easy: total surveillance, because it allows the people who control it to get away with crimes and frame those who they fear. Once a system is believed to be perfect proof of anything, those who can edit it become all powerful.

Every law we have to restrain or control the police or government was enacted for a reason, and that reason was abuse of powers by police and governments. Laws like that don't just fall out of trees.

TWW

Re:What's so startling?

[faloi]

What hypocrisy? If you try really hard, you'll hear multiple sides of a lot issues thrown around. Unless we finally get all the way to enforced groupthink, my neighbor doing something I speak out against doesn't make either of us a hypocrite.

Big Brother Livin Large in 2007

[jamstar7]

This kinda thing freaks me out in so many ways.

Keeping track of 'minor purchases'?? Whose business is it that I buy a pack of cigarettes or some condoms or whatever? Why is the government so interested in this petty stuff unless it intends to use this info against me someday? Why does the government have cause to know who I hang with, who I sleep with?

How long until cards like this are used to replace hard currency in order to 'fine tune' the economy and strip the last vestiges of privacy? How long until having legal tender in your possession is considered a crime because 'only terrorists have untracable cash'?

Computer,state the last known location of Dr McCoy

[iamacat]

While this is scary, use of computers in everyday life necessarily equals loss of privacy as everything you do can be automatically scanned for patterns, archived indefinitely and disclosed to 3rd parties. If we don't want to be under constant surveillance, we as geeks should abandon our jobs and insist that critical functions in our society are performed by direct interaction between humans who, unlike computers, can be taught discretion.

Re:This is why I am scared

[HomelessInLaJolla]

We're all a bunch of fucking pussies and that's what's scary.

And the alternative is what? Everyone could end up like me: homeless and monitored post-per-post by slavering account farming trolls demanding "where's the evidence" and screaming "conspiracy theorist" for any statement they make?

All of the talk, the rhetoric, the grand speeches, and the good will in the world is meaningless against the power of the purse strings. As a total population we have no control left over government taxation and spending.

Even if they had ignored his bullshit, he would have just passed an Executive Order stating he could do it anyway

That's the bottom line of it all: "Even if they had... he would have just... anyway." That's what happens when the whole of the population is maintained in inescapable debt. The entire nation was reduced, financially, to slave status about a century ago. It's much too late now to expect that people do anything but try to live their lives in a manner which is most comfortable for them. Some people manage to work their way into positions of greater or lesser privelege. That's about the best they can hope for.

Even if everyone would write in "Donald Duck" for every election from today forward, the politicians would just resume their own offices and collect their usual taxes and boondoggle and pork-barrel their friends and business associates anyway. It's one big useless show created to hide the reality that America is a classist nation, it is a plutocracy, and we do have a caste system which is every bit as rigid as anything ever imagined in any other nation.

I'm probably preaching to the choir, too. Mostly I just don't want to be homeless anymore but neither am I going to acquiesce to being shoveled back into the animal farm.

Re:made possible by an american company???

[p0tat03]

It's not America's fault, it's the American company's fault. I think you're being a bit oversensitive - that sentence doesn't bash America, it raises alarm that our corporate community is knee-deep in China's systematic oppression of their people.

Yeah, the oppression will continue regardless of American companies' involvement, but that doesn't justify being involved.

People Tracking & RFID

[memojuez]

Anonymous Coward may be correct;

With RFID chips already embedded in your Passport and the ability of the Authorities to locate your cell through triangulation [findarticles.com], the potential already exists here.

goldfish

[roesti]

This is creepy. In that documentary called China Blue, it was stated by one of the factory owners that most of it's workforce is ignorant and too stupid to think for themselves. They really regard people there as illiterate simpletons.

Wow, that's nothing like Australia, Britain or the US at all. Corporations and governments treat us not as ignorant, illiterate simpletons but as ignorant, illiterate simpletons with short memories. It's hard to believe we have it so good.

I wonder how long the chinese people will put up with this. I wonder how long the rest of the world will put up with it when it comes comes to their back yard under the guise of "Think of the Children" or "War on Terror"

Indeed...

Re:Go China!

[phantomfive]

This has happened in the US, in New Orleans [bbwexchange.com] and a few other places [interesting-people.org]. It seems to be quite good at reducing crime, with murder rates down 57% and auto thefts down 30%.

The scary thing here isn't the video cameras, it's the RFID tags. No car thief is going to carry an ID to let themselves be tracked. This is to track the citizens, see what they are doing; to know what their patterns are, to determine if they are subversive. What other purpose can there be?

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) in China, err 2021.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/plotsummary [imdb.com]

Johnny! Let's go! Lucky!

Re:Go China!

[robably]

This would be awesome if it was open to the public. As long as it's not just a way for the few to know everything about the many and engage in selective enforcement, it's towards the good.

If we give the public cancer that's bad, but so long as we give the people in charge cancer too, that's GREAT!!! Honestly what on Earth is the attraction some people see in a surveillance state, regardless of who is doing the surveilling?
Surveillance isn't like a debt that can be cancelled out by the other side paying it too - if both sides are under surveillance, both sides LOSE.

Re:This is why I am scared

[Hooya]

To those that regurgitate "I have nothing to hide..", I ask them: "So when can I come by and install a web cam in your bedroom?" That usually shuts them up pretty quick.

Re:Go China!

[Cheesey]

Surely you jest. The Chinese secret police will not be giving civilians raw access to the data. It's surveillance, not equivalence. They are not going to share their information advantage.

Some people believe in a "Panopticon"-style world in which anyone may watch anyone else - the future of privacy. I've seen several posts on that topic here. But it's a utopian dream, as impractical as Communism. It is inevitable that the upper ranks of society will obtain privacy for themselves. You might be able to spy on your neighbours, but you won't be spying on the police, the President, or the local mob. Like Marxism, the idea looks good on paper, but will lead to total disaster whenever it is implemented.

Re:Go China!

[stonedcat]

Don't worry, they'll make an amendment in a few years to fix this "outdated error" and then we'll all be terrorists.

I wish I were joking.

mod this crap down

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who looks into the content that this guy writes can see right though him. Mods these days make snap decisions on the face value, not actual quality or insight.

And the alternative is what? Everyone could end up like me: homeless and monitored post-per-post by slavering account farming trolls demanding "where's the evidence" and screaming "conspiracy theorist" for any statement they make?

That's real telling. You aren't being forced to post under the same identity or any identity at all. You aren't even forced to post on Slashdot.

If you don't want fans or critics then don't use an account. Although don't expect everyone to blindly accept your theories as fact without any evidence that you always avoid providing.

As a total population we have no control left over government taxation and spending.

The population has as much control as it allows itself to. There are ways to fix the problems you regularly complain about. You refuse to do so and continue ranting on Slashdot which does nothing to help anyones situation.

That's what happens when the whole of the population is maintained in inescapable debt.

This old unsupported claim again? Get some new material.

It's one big useless show created to hide the reality that America is a classist nation, it is a plutocracy, and we do have a caste system which is every bit as rigid as anything ever imagined in any other nation.

Yeah, right. You're homeless. You're the traditional rock bottom of the class. Yet here you are posting on Slashdot and accessing the internet. Getting free meals each day. Living in a sanitary environment. Try to pull this 'homeless', 'I'm opressed', 'I'm the victim' bullshit in anywhere besides North America or Europe and you'd be dead in a month. The U.S. has its problems. Allowing idiots like you to leach off society is one of them.

Mostly I just don't want to be homeless anymore but neither am I going to acquiesce to being shoveled back into the animal farm.

You continue saying one thing and doing another. The problem is your ego. You refuse to accept anything that is "below you". You fail to realize you really aren't the God king you seem to convince yourself you are. You aren't any greater than the average citizen.

The mods are buying this shit, once again. Thanks for helping to decrease the already low signal to noise ratio we have here.

Re:This is why I am scared

[maxume]

I don't account farm, I barely troll, and I still think your crazy.

Re:Catch 22?

[gweihir]

Seems there's a catch 22 with these sorts of things. I don't exactly like China's government and whatever, but I think every government faces something similar to this: which is worse, crime or total surveillance?

That argument would need that surveilance actually reduces crime. There are by now several british studies showing that it may not actually do so. It may not even shift crime to an other area. In addition there are other, proven methods to reduce crime. One is improvement of living conditions.

There is however one thing that a surveilance state is very good at: Supressing political dissent. Political dissent needs leaders. These can be identified bu such a handy system and then be eleminated. It is quite obvious to me that this is the main motivation for such a system.

Mark of the Beast?

[night_flyer]

doesnt sound too far fetched now...

There are only a few steps left to make this the mark of the beast. making all purchases possible on the card/chip and to implant the chip... and all that technology is already here...

Revelations 13:16-17
"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads, that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark..."

Public Service Announcement

[tomhudson]

[ This post is a Public Service Announcement ]

- - NOTE: Stevie is not representative of homeless people in general. For example, the fastest growing group of homeless people are women and children [wikipedia.org] in dire straits, whose homelessness is caused by such events as seeking refuge from an abusive relative, death of a spouse, job loss, or illness. The comments below are specific to Stevie, not homeless people in general.

Stevie blathered:

"Mostly I just don't want to be homeless anymore but neither am I going to acquiesce to being shoveled back into the animal farm."

Why not do something radical, like get a job? Oh, right ... you said you won't take a job except for one that meets your conditions. It has to be in exactly the field you claim to be so good in (though if you're that good, why don't you have a job?), at the pay you think you're worth, with the working conditions you think you deserve, that its the employers' responsibility to "give you a leg up", and that anything else is "dishonest."

Those are your words.

Take some meds, get a haircut, and start applying for a job more in line with your real qualifications, not your inflated delusion of self-worth.

The job rules are simple:

1. After one year out of work, a person with 5 years previous experience is only worth as much as a recent graduate with one or two year's current experience;
2. After two years out of work, a person with 5 years previous experience is worth less than a recent graduate with no experience;
3. After three to five years out of work, a person with 5 years experience is no longer a suitable job candidate in their field.

The other rules are also simple:

1. Think too highly of yourself, and others will compensate by thinking less of you;
2. Blame everyone else, and people will see you don't accept responsibility;
3. Demand that everyone agrees with you, and eventually nobody will.

You're your own worst enemy. You keep complaining, but you post here under multiple accounts, whine, whine, whine about how unfair employers are and how they owe you a job with specific conditions and pay because that's what you went to school for. Grow up - because with your crap attitude, you're not even qualified for a "do you want fries with that" McJob.

You say you don't want to go into any of the programs available for the homeless because you "don't want to be stereotyped with the alcoholics and the druggies". How is anyone who thinks they're "too good" any better? You're actually worse - they at least admit they have a problem, and aren't too full of false self-pride to take advantage of an opportunity for some help.

A lot of people end up homeless due to misfortune, divorce, job loss, medical bills, addictions, bad decisions, whatever. This doesn't make them "bad people" - but your claim that you don't want to be "stereotyped" as "one of them" shows how you think yourself so much better.

Stop thinking you're better than people who had the guts to take jobs that you would consider "beneath you." You're not. You can't even troll properly, FFS.

And stop complaining about anyone stalking you; remember how you pulled this BS a couple of weeks ago [slashdot.org] ... if anyone was stalking, it was you, and this isn't the first time you've pulled this crap on someone. You're a hypocritical dickhead [slashdot.org].

[ This has been a public service announcement. Thank you for your patience ]

Obligatory link to Brin's "Transparent Society".

[argent]

The Transparent Society [davidbrin.com].

In a few years people are going to be taking advantage of Google's storage to upload everything pretty close to 24/7 from their phonecam to broadcast on Google's video servers, and you'll be be able to mashup this with Google maps street level and redirect it to your VR-of-choice and it'll be just like being there (if you look past the lag and compression artifacts), except with a rewind button.

I can think of worse guardians of the transparent society.

Re:People Tracking & RFID

[JackieBrown]

How is this insightful when it is wrong? Do people just mod posts up because they sound good?

Re:Johnny Mnemonic (1995) in China, err 2021.

[QuantumG]

When it's embedded in your brain, then you can brag.

Well, when it becomes feasible

[Superfarstucker]

I feel the best use of it would be the surveillance of our protectors and elected officials while on duty. It will never happen of course, but it should. Fuck, our vice president seems to think that the number of state secrets he is keeping is a state secret. Top level government officials should not have any form of privacy that cannot be audited. It's not that we don't believe that they're honest folks. "trust, but verify", that's one of many conservative parenting ethos, is it not?