China tracking and scoring citizens software#
China tracking and scoring citizens series#

“If an Uighur appears, they will be tagged, but it won’t tag Han Chinese.” Potential for misuseĪsked if he was concerned about these features being misused by authorities, Chen says that he is not worried because the software is being used by police, implying that such institutions should be automatically trusted. “The populations in these countries are more racially diverse than in China, and in China, it’s also used to tell Uighurs from Han Chinese,” Chen says, referring to the country’s dominant ethnicity. Cameras can tell Uighurs from Han Chinese. One Taigusys system that is used by police in China, as well as security services in Thailand and some African countries, includes identifiers such as “yellow, white, black”, and even “Uighur”.Ĭhildren pass cameras in Akto, near Kashgar, Xinjiang, where China’s Uighurs face intense surveillance. Facial expressions can also vary widely across cultures, leading to further inaccuracies and ethnic bias. Only Taigusys responded to an interview request.Īnother problem is that recognition systems are usually based on actors posing in what they think are happy, sad, angry and other emotional states and not on real expressions of those emotions. The Guardian contacted a range of companies covered in the report. Ultimately, groups such as Article 19 say that the technology should be banned before widespread adoption globally makes the ramifications too difficult to contain. “A lot of biometric surveillance, I think, is closely tied to intimidation and censorship, and I suppose is one example of just that.” Biometrics 3.0Ī recent report by Article 19 on the development of these surveillance technologies – which one Chinese firm describes as “biometrics 3.0” – by 27 companies in China found its growth without safeguards and public deliberation, was especially problematic, particularly in the public security and education sectors.

“This is a familiar and slightly frustrating narrative that we see used frequently when newer, ‘shiny’ technologies are introduced under the umbrella of safety or security, but in reality video surveillance has little nexus to safety, and I’m not sure how they thought that feedback in real time would fix violence,” Marda told the Guardian. Chen, a general manager at the company, says the system in the doorway is the company’s bestseller at the moment because of high demand during the coronavirus pandemic.Ĭhen hails emotion recognition as a way to predict dangerous behaviour by prisoners, detect potential criminals at police checkpoints, problem pupils in schools and elderly people experiencing dementia in care homes.Ī ‘Smart AI Epidemic Prevention’ made by the company SenseTime, in Shenzhen, can detect if people have a fever and identify faces even behind a mask.

China tracking and scoring citizens series#

Visitors are greeted at the doorway by a series of cameras capturing their images on a big screen that displays body temperature, along with age estimates, and other statistics. The main office of Taigusys is tucked behind a few low-rise office buildings in Shenzhen.

With the global industry forecast to be worth nearly $36bn by 2023, growing at nearly 30% a year, rights groups say action needs to be taken now. The industry is booming in China, where since at least 2012, figures including President Xi Jinping have emphasised the creation of “positive energy” as part of an ideological campaign to encourage certain kinds of expression and limit others.Ĭritics say the technology is based on a pseudo-science of stereotypes, and an increasing number of researchers, lawyers and rights activists believe it has serious implications for human rights, privacy and freedom of expression. But similar to facial recognition, it involves the mass collection of sensitive personal data to track, monitor and profile people and uses machine learning to analyse expressions and other clues.