The recent outbreak of the deadly coronavirus 2019nCOv across central China has drawn international spotlight onto just how truly advanced, vast, sophisticated, and complex the country's infamous mass surveillance system is. It is used to literally track the movements, contacts, and activities of EVERY SINGLE person in China. Even if you are stopping by a store to use the restroom, you are being tracked and logged. China already boasts the highest density of surveillance camera coverage in the world and most of these cameras are "smart", outfitted with facial recognition technology and connected to a powerful AI scanning network.
Before you think that "this is the United States, (or any western country you want to name), it cannot happen here/there"... THINK AGAIN.
Understand the nature of governments. ANY government. Governments possess the same personalities as people in general. Because governments are run by people.
Governments are inquisitive and curious.
Governments like to boast and brag about their accomplishments.
Governments do not like being told that they are doing something wrong.
Governments do not like being resisted when they have a goal in mind.
Governments will cheat and cut corners to accomplish a task when they think no one is watching.
Governments like to hide any mistakes that they have made.
Governments like to profit and enrich themselves, even at other's expense if need be.
Governments are more eager to receive favors than give favors.
Where there is a will, there is a way. That applies just as much to governments as do ordinary people.
Governments will have no qualms about deceiving others if it means to benefit themselves.
And last but not least...
Governments look out for their own interests first and foremost. Not yours or mine.
THIS is the nature and mechanism of the future. As massive amounts of funding are being placed into surveillance and espionage above everything else, we can only expect, that in the next 20-50 years, the entire world will become surveillance states. Kingdoms or democracies, theocracies or political autocracies... Makes no difference. The most important issue at hand is that this technological progression towards a surveillance singularity cannot be stopped. It is the way of the future. HOWEVER, it is our top priority for ourselves as well as bearers of the torch of freedom to our future generations, to learn how to survive this onslaught, evade, and possibly dismantle and disable it when it becomes a dire need to.
Now on to the article...
amp.cnn.com
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Hong Kong(CNN) The camera hovers just above the elderly woman's head, as she looks up, her face becomes confused and worried.
"Yes auntie, this is the drone speaking to you," a voice booms out. "You shouldn't walk about without wearing a mask."
The woman hurries off, occasionally looking over her shoulder as the drone continues to shout instructions: "You'd better go back home and don't forget to wash your hands."
This is China under quarantine in 2020. In another video promoted by state media, a police drone orders men sitting at an outdoor mahjong table to "stop playing and leave the site as soon as possible."
"Don't look at the drone," it says, as a small child glances up curiously. "Ask your father to leave immediately."
As Chinese authorities struggle to contain the deadly Wuhan coronavirus, they are turning to a sophisticated authoritarian playbook honed over decades of crackdowns on dissidents and undesirables to enforce quarantines and lockdowns across the country.
This has been accompanied by a shift in the narrative around the virus. It has moved from a story of an entire country pulling together in a time of crisis to a darker tale of bad actors undermining efforts to keep people safe and spreading the virus through their own irresponsibility.
Critics argue that this also serves to obfuscate myriad failures by the state as a whole, instead putting the blame on individual citizens and the occasional bad apple of an official. A pertinent example of this alleged tactic was the swift dispatch of anti-corruption officials to Wuhan after the death of whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, whose death created huge anger and outrage online.
Surveillance state
Police in China are far better equipped for a crackdown in 2020 than they would have been in previous years, thanks to a vast surveillance panopticon that the state has built up nationwide, but previously not used to tackle something of this scale.
The most extreme example of this 21st century surveillance state is in the far western region of Xinjiang, where ubiquitous CCTV cameras and police checkpoints have been used to tightly control the movement and behavior of members of the Uyghur ethnic minority, hundreds of thousands of whom have been placed in "reeducation camps."
Chinese companies have made millions building advanced facial recognition and AI-driven surveillance technology for police forces and local governments across the country. While the use of these tools nationwide is not as extreme as in Xinjiang, its rollout has been rapid, boosted by positive stories in state media about how AI cameras have been used to catch offenders or crack down on jaywalkers and other petty criminals.
Facial recognition, in particular, has become a normal part of many people's lives, used in subways, office buildings, schools and even safari parks to check season-ticket holders.
In a 2018 report on Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch warned that China was building a "digital totalitarian state," where draconian technologies used in the far west were quietly becoming the norm nationwide. The current crisis is providing insight into just how potentially close such a situation is to being realized, as the government turns to new technology to track potential virus carriers.
Speaking to state broadcaster CCTV, Li Lanjuan, a top official with the National Health Commission, explained how "in the era of big data, the movements of each person can be clearly understood."
She gave the example of a man in Zhejiang in eastern China who reported symptoms but said he had not had any contact with anyone from Wuhan. "Then we checked the data and found that he had been in contact with three people from the epidemic area," Li said.
Much of the data being used in this effort is from surveillance cameras or hoovered up from people's devices, and likely most of the people being tracked had no idea this was possible. State media coverage, however, largely echoes Li's passive tone -- that the government has access to such information is seen as a natural occurrence in this modern "era of big data," not the result of a potentially pervasive, invasive surveillance state.
Writing in the state-backed Global Times last month, technology analyst Chen Jing said that "in the past, it was unimaginable to track the movement of people on a large scale, and it required a lot of resources."
"Nowadays, with the popularization of smart phones, various types of apps are increasingly infiltrating into daily life," he said. "People's activities create imprints in the electronic world, making big data tracking both technically possible (and) one of the most important developments of future technology."
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Before you think that "this is the United States, (or any western country you want to name), it cannot happen here/there"... THINK AGAIN.
Understand the nature of governments. ANY government. Governments possess the same personalities as people in general. Because governments are run by people.
Governments are inquisitive and curious.
Governments like to boast and brag about their accomplishments.
Governments do not like being told that they are doing something wrong.
Governments do not like being resisted when they have a goal in mind.
Governments will cheat and cut corners to accomplish a task when they think no one is watching.
Governments like to hide any mistakes that they have made.
Governments like to profit and enrich themselves, even at other's expense if need be.
Governments are more eager to receive favors than give favors.
Where there is a will, there is a way. That applies just as much to governments as do ordinary people.
Governments will have no qualms about deceiving others if it means to benefit themselves.
And last but not least...
Governments look out for their own interests first and foremost. Not yours or mine.
THIS is the nature and mechanism of the future. As massive amounts of funding are being placed into surveillance and espionage above everything else, we can only expect, that in the next 20-50 years, the entire world will become surveillance states. Kingdoms or democracies, theocracies or political autocracies... Makes no difference. The most important issue at hand is that this technological progression towards a surveillance singularity cannot be stopped. It is the way of the future. HOWEVER, it is our top priority for ourselves as well as bearers of the torch of freedom to our future generations, to learn how to survive this onslaught, evade, and possibly dismantle and disable it when it becomes a dire need to.
Now on to the article...
China is using its authoritarian arsenal to crack down on anyone who might spread the Wuhan virus
As Chinese authorities struggle to contain the deadly Wuhan coronavirus, they are increasingly turning to a sophisticated authoritarian playbook honed over decades of cracking down on dissidents to enforce quarantines and lockdowns across the country.
amp.cnn.com ----------
Hong Kong(CNN) The camera hovers just above the elderly woman's head, as she looks up, her face becomes confused and worried.
"Yes auntie, this is the drone speaking to you," a voice booms out. "You shouldn't walk about without wearing a mask."
The woman hurries off, occasionally looking over her shoulder as the drone continues to shout instructions: "You'd better go back home and don't forget to wash your hands."
This is China under quarantine in 2020. In another video promoted by state media, a police drone orders men sitting at an outdoor mahjong table to "stop playing and leave the site as soon as possible."
"Don't look at the drone," it says, as a small child glances up curiously. "Ask your father to leave immediately."
As Chinese authorities struggle to contain the deadly Wuhan coronavirus, they are turning to a sophisticated authoritarian playbook honed over decades of crackdowns on dissidents and undesirables to enforce quarantines and lockdowns across the country.
This has been accompanied by a shift in the narrative around the virus. It has moved from a story of an entire country pulling together in a time of crisis to a darker tale of bad actors undermining efforts to keep people safe and spreading the virus through their own irresponsibility.
Critics argue that this also serves to obfuscate myriad failures by the state as a whole, instead putting the blame on individual citizens and the occasional bad apple of an official. A pertinent example of this alleged tactic was the swift dispatch of anti-corruption officials to Wuhan after the death of whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, whose death created huge anger and outrage online.
Surveillance state
Police in China are far better equipped for a crackdown in 2020 than they would have been in previous years, thanks to a vast surveillance panopticon that the state has built up nationwide, but previously not used to tackle something of this scale.
The most extreme example of this 21st century surveillance state is in the far western region of Xinjiang, where ubiquitous CCTV cameras and police checkpoints have been used to tightly control the movement and behavior of members of the Uyghur ethnic minority, hundreds of thousands of whom have been placed in "reeducation camps."
Chinese companies have made millions building advanced facial recognition and AI-driven surveillance technology for police forces and local governments across the country. While the use of these tools nationwide is not as extreme as in Xinjiang, its rollout has been rapid, boosted by positive stories in state media about how AI cameras have been used to catch offenders or crack down on jaywalkers and other petty criminals.
Facial recognition, in particular, has become a normal part of many people's lives, used in subways, office buildings, schools and even safari parks to check season-ticket holders.
In a 2018 report on Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch warned that China was building a "digital totalitarian state," where draconian technologies used in the far west were quietly becoming the norm nationwide. The current crisis is providing insight into just how potentially close such a situation is to being realized, as the government turns to new technology to track potential virus carriers.
Speaking to state broadcaster CCTV, Li Lanjuan, a top official with the National Health Commission, explained how "in the era of big data, the movements of each person can be clearly understood."
She gave the example of a man in Zhejiang in eastern China who reported symptoms but said he had not had any contact with anyone from Wuhan. "Then we checked the data and found that he had been in contact with three people from the epidemic area," Li said.
Much of the data being used in this effort is from surveillance cameras or hoovered up from people's devices, and likely most of the people being tracked had no idea this was possible. State media coverage, however, largely echoes Li's passive tone -- that the government has access to such information is seen as a natural occurrence in this modern "era of big data," not the result of a potentially pervasive, invasive surveillance state.
Writing in the state-backed Global Times last month, technology analyst Chen Jing said that "in the past, it was unimaginable to track the movement of people on a large scale, and it required a lot of resources."
"Nowadays, with the popularization of smart phones, various types of apps are increasingly infiltrating into daily life," he said. "People's activities create imprints in the electronic world, making big data tracking both technically possible (and) one of the most important developments of future technology."
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