The Independent reports that China’s national public surveillance system is starting to bear fruit in its quest for law and social order: “Chinese police have used facial recognition technology to locate and arrest a man who was among a crowd of 60,000 concert goers.” The man was accused of ‘economic crimes’. Facial recognition cameras were set up at the entrances to the concert.
This isn't the first time China’s surveillance system has been able to find people sought by Chinese authorities. For example, 25 suspects using facial recognition were arrested at a beer festival last August.
China openly describes itself as a world leader in facial recognition technology. Chinese citizens are regularly reminded that the growing surveillance system makes it nearly impossible to evade authorities. Presently, China’s system employs 170 million CCTV cameras with another 400 million to be installed in the next three years.
It is easy to see that thins kind of technology would be appealing to tyrannies the world over. It may even be of more than passing interest to more than just tyrannies. The question is whether this kind of technology, coupled with other surveillance methods such as tracking of cell phone purchases, cell phone conversations, and cell phone locations, can form the basis to build a Thousand Year Reich that really could last 1,000 years or more. As it stands now, the Chinese people are rapidly and willingly abandoning cash for buying and using electronic purchases via cell phones and online instead.
It is hard to see how a person could remain out of sight in a country with about 470 million cameras constantly monitoring everything in the camera’s range of vision. This kind of a deep surveillance state really is starting to look like a new normal for at least the roughly 1.4 billion Chinese citizens.
B&B orig: 4/23/18