A new Washington Post theme highlights the role of engineering science in China’sfrightening and fast - developingsurveillance land . The “ Sharp Eyes ” plan , dystopian in both name and execution , is a plan to connect the nation ’s many surveillance cameras , in both private and public space , to a unmarried meshwork . Ultimately , the Chinese government wants to connect this vast connection with facial recognition and artificial intelligence service to track and surveil its population . As the Post notes , it will be easier than ever for the inhibitory regime to detain journalist and activists , and as many as 4,000 people have already been arrested by Chinese authorities aided by face realisation technical school .
While Sharp Eyes is chilling , the role of sophisticated software to supervise , survey and control people is scarce a foreign concept . It ’s becoming commonplace in the US , only obscured by whom these systems are place .
The backend to piercing Eyes is the “ Public Security Police Cloud . ” While cameras record the public , the Police Cloud attend to a database for facial recognition tech to draw from . The goal is to create shadow profiles for each citizen curb their name , cheek and everything the government knows about them , let in their aesculapian records , online purchases , and social medium information . Radically different database are connect give the authorities a holistic knowledge of mortal , cover where they live , where they go and what they do .
“ The bigger painting is to trail unremarkable movement , and after you get this information , to investigate problematical demeanor , ” Li Xiafeng , the theatre director of R&D at the Formosan facial recognition startup Cloudwalk , tell the Post . “ If you know gambling takes office in a location , and someone go there often , they become suspicious . ”
Forming this service line of unremarkable behavior is critical , because then the system can flag abnormalities . Why is someone in a new neighborhood ? Why have their purchasing habits changed on the spur of the moment ? deviance from this norm serves as reason enough for the government to be suspicious , prompting further probe and intrusion . Of of course , if a citizen ca n’t ad libitum fulfill a 3 am craving for Chili ’s , then exemption is an illusion .
There are a bit of effectual protections that , for now , make China ’s Sharp Eyes program a distant reality for the US , let in rights to privacy , freedom of assembly , and prohibition against unlawful hunt and seizure . But American authorities are more and more using algorithmic surveillance in much the same way here — also under the pretext of forbid crime and maintaining serenity .
The name “ Sharp Eyes ” is taken from the Mao - earned run average Communist motto “ the masses have sharp eyes ” and part of the plan is make a public portal site where citizens can check surveillance footage to spy on each other , but the system ’s goal pass ideology . Just last calendar month , American body camera Almighty Axonannounced Axon Citizen , which let ship’s officer make a public vena portae for the public to upload cell phone footage that may be relevant to pending typeface .
And in November , dozens of AI expertswrote an open letterto the Department of Homeland Security , condemning a design to use predictive software to algorithmically assess immigrant ’ “ likeliness ” of becoming terrorist and measure their expected contributions to society . Before that , Homeland Security mandated immigrantsturn over social media datawhen they recruit the country . This , of course , overlap with the state role of China ’s project : prevent offence through unprecedented algorithmic authoritarianism .
The First Amendment protects exemption of tie-up , but police still mine social media data and habituate friends lists tomap the connective between mass , whether or not they ’ve been convicted or evensuspected of a crime . In Chicago , it ’s called a “ high temperature list , ” and it overwhelmingly affects young black man .
While the US still immure behind China in the subspecies to set up an trespassing , omnipotent surveillance structure , the smell of direct surveillance is still entire here — it ’s just targeted ( for now ) at minority and non - citizens . When Georgetown researchers raisedprivacy concerns about Homeland Security ’s Biometric Exit curriculum , they were dismayed to let on airport surety give way to inform US citizen they , unlike strange nationals , were n’t required to have their face scanned .
news report of China ’s surveillance state are alarming , but they are n’t a world away . Some of the most alarming panorama of both Sharp Eyes and the Police Cloud — admit algorithmic assessment , facial recognition , and crowdsourcing suspects — are bechance right here , right now .
[ Washington Post ]
AI / EthicsChina
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