*[Enwl-eng] The Fight for Our Faces, Harsh Surveillance in China Revealed
ENWL
enwl.bellona at gmail.com
Tue Jan 7 23:46:11 MSK 2020
January 7, 2020
This article by Charlie Campbell TIME Magazine,
Dec.2-9, 2019 is most important! It describes the pervasive surveillance
of China's people and their deprivation of basic freedons and liberties.
Their "closed" governmental, socialist/capitalistic system is here
deeply revealed, perhaps for the first time. Please read it and share with
others....We see Hong Kong now protesting...China could be next which would
lead to a catastrophe for millions of people.
let us demonstrate, in one form or another, for an increase in Human Rights
in China!
Arn Specter, Delaware
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
'The Entire System Is Designed to Suppress Us.' What the Chinese
Surveillance State Means for the Rest of the World
BY CHARLIE CAMPBELL
NOVEMBER 21, 2019
Every morning, Mrs. Chen dons her bright purple tai chi pajamas and joins
the dozen or so other members of Hongmen Martial Arts Group for practice
outside Chongqing’s Jiangnan Stadium. But a few months ago, she was in such
a rush to join their whirling sword-dance routine that she dropped her
purse. Fortunately, a security guard noticed it lying in the public square
via one of the overhead security cameras. He placed it at the lost and
found, where Mrs. Chen gratefully retrieved it later.
“Were it not for these cameras, someone might have stolen it,” Mrs. Chen,
who asked to be identified by only her surname, tells TIME on a smoggy
morning in China’s sprawling central megacity. “Having these cameras
everywhere makes me feel safe.”
What sounds like a lucky escape is almost to be expected in Chongqing, which
has the dubious distinction of being the world’s most surveilled city. The
seething mass of 15.35 million people straddling the confluence of the
Yangtze and Jialing rivers boasted 2.58 million surveillance cameras in
2019, according to an analysis published in August by the tech-research
website Comparitech. That’s a frankly Orwellian ratio of one CCTV camera for
every 5.9 citizens—or 30 times their prevalence in Washington, D.C.
'AI Farms' Are at the Forefront of China's Global Ambitions
As China’s economy slows and rising wages make manufacturing less
competitive, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is turning to
technology to arrest the slide. Strategic technologies such as AI are a key
focus.SharePlay VideoEvery move in the city is seemingly captured digitally.
Cameras perch over sidewalks, hover across busy intersections and swivel
above shopping districts. But Chongqing is by no means unique. Eight of the
top 10 most surveilled cities in the world are in China, according to
Comparitech, as the world’s No. 2 economy rolls out an unparalleled system
of social control. Facial–recognition software is used to access office
buildings, snare criminals and even shame jaywalkers at busy intersections.
China today is a harbinger of what society looks like when surveillance
proliferates unchecked.
But while few nations have embraced surveillance the way China has, it is
far from alone. Surveillance has become an everyday part of life in most
developed societies, aided by an explosion in AI–powered facial–recognition
technology. Last year, London police made their first arrest based on facial
recognition by cross–referencing photos of pedestrians in tourist hot spots
with a database of known felons. A few months earlier, a trial of
facial–recognition software by police in New Delhi reportedly recognized
3,000 missing children in just four days. In August, a wanted drug
trafficker was captured in Brazil after facial-recognition software spotted
him at a subway station. The technology is widespread in the U.S. too. It
has aided in the arrest of alleged credit-card swindlers in Colorado and a
suspected rapist in Pennsylvania.
Still, the risks are considerable. As Western democracies enact safeguards
to protect citizens from the rampant harvesting of data by government and
corporations, China is exporting its AI-powered surveillance technology to
authoritarian governments around the world. Chinese firms are providing
high-tech surveillance tools to at least 18 nations from Venezuela to
Zimbabwe, according to a 2018 report by Freedom House. China is a
battleground where the modern surveillance state has reached a nadir,
prompting censure from governments and institutions around the globe, but it
is also where rebellion against its overreach is being most ferociously
fought.
“Today’s economic business models all encourage people to share data,” says
Lokman Tsui, a privacy expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In
China, he adds, we are seeing “what happens when the state goes after that
data to exploit and weaponize it.”
Some 1,500 miles northwest of where Mrs. Chen recovered her purse,
surveillance in China’s restive region of Xinjiang has helped put an
estimated 1 million people into “re-education centers” akin to concentration
camps, according to the U.N. Many were arrested, tried and convicted by
computer algorithm based on data harvested by the cameras that stud every 20
steps in some parts.
In the name of fighting terrorism, members of predominantly Muslim ethnic
groups—mostly Uighurs but also Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz—are forced to
surrender biometric data like photos, fingerprints, DNA, blood and voice
samples. Police are armed with a smartphone app that then automatically
flags certain behaviors, according to reverse engineering by the advocacy
group Human Rights Watch. Those who grow a beard, leave their house via a
back door or visit the mosque often are red-flagged by the system and
interrogated.
Sarsenbek Akaruli, 45, a veterinarian and trader from the Xinjiang city of
Ili, was arrested on Nov. 2, 2017, and remains in a detention camp after
police found the banned messaging app WhatsApp on his cell phone, according
to his wife Gulnur Kosdaulet. A citizen of neighboring Kazakhstan, she has
traveled to Xinjiang four times to search for him but found even friends in
the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reluctant to help. “Nobody wanted
to risk being recorded on security cameras talking to me in case they ended
up in the camps themselves,” she tells TIME.
Choose your country
United States of America Afghanistan
Albania Algeria
American Samoa Andorra
Angola Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda Argentina
Armenia Aruba
Australia Austria
Azerbaijan Bahamas
Bahrain Bangladesh
Barbados Belarus
Belgium Belize
Benin Bermuda
Bhutan Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana
Brazil Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria Burkina Faso
Burundi Cambodia
Cameroon Canada
Cape Verde Cayman Islands
Central African Republic Chad
Chile China
Colombia Comoros
Congo Congo, Democratic Republic of
Cook Islands Costa Rica
Cote d'Ivoire Croatia
Cuba Cyprus
Czech Republic Denmark
Djibouti Dominica
Dominican Republic Ecuador
Egypt El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea Eritrea
Estonia Ethiopia
Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands
(Malvinas) Fiji
Finland France
French Guiana French Polynesia
Gabon Gambia
Georgia Germany
Ghana Gibraltar
Greece Greenland
Grenada Guadeloupe
Guam Guatemala
Guinea Guinea-Bissau
Guyana Haiti
Holy See Honduras
Hong Kong Hungary
Iceland India
Indonesia Iran
Iraq Ireland
Israel Italy
Jamaica Japan
Jordan Kazakhstan
Kenya Kiribati
Korea Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan Laos
Latvia Lebanon
Lesotho Liberia
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein
Lithuania Luxembourg
Macao Macedonia
Madagascar Malawi
Malaysia Maldives
Mali Malta
Marshall Islands Martinique
Mauritania Mauritius
Mayotte Mexico
Micronesia Monaco
Mongolia Montserrat
Morocco Mozambique
Myanmar Namibia
Nauru Nepal
Netherlands Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia New Zealand
Nicaragua Niger
Nigeria Niue
Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands
Norway Oman
Pakistan Palau
Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama
Papua New Guinea Paraguay
Peru Philippines
Pitcairn Poland
Portugal Puerto Rico
Qatar Republic of Korea
Republic of Moldova Reunion
Romania Russian Federation
Rwanda Saint Helena
Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia
Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent
and the Grenadines Samoa
San Marino Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia Senegal
Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles
Sierra Leone Singapore
Slovakia Slovenia
Solomon Islands Somalia
South Africa Spain
Sri Lanka Sudan
Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands
Swaziland Sweden
Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic
Taiwan Tajikistan
Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand
Timor-Leste Togo
Tokelau Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia
Turkey Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu
Uganda Ukraine
United Arab Emirates United Kingdom
Virgin Islands (U.S.) Virgin Islands
(British) Uruguay
Uzbekistan Vanuatu
Venezuela Viet Nam
Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara
Yemen Zambia
Zimbabwe
.
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Policy for further details.Surveillance governs all aspects of camp life.
Bakitali Nur, 47, a fruit and vegetable exporter in the Xinjiang town of
Khorgos, was arrested after authorities became suspicious of his frequent
business trips abroad. The father of three says he spent a year in a single
room with seven other inmates, all clad in blue jumpsuits, forced to sit
still on plastic stools for 17 hours straight as four HikVision cameras
recorded every move. “Anyone caught talking or moving was forced into stress
positions for hours at a time,” he says.
Bakitali was released only after he developed a chronic illness. But his
surveillance hell continued over five months of virtual house arrest, which
is common for former detainees. He was forbidden from traveling outside his
village without permission, and a CCTV camera was installed opposite his
home. Every time he approached the front door, a policeman would call to ask
where he was going. He had to report to the local government office every
day to undergo “political education” and write a self-criticism detailing
his previous day’s activities. Unable to travel for work, former detainees
like Bakitali are often obliged to toil at government factories for wages as
miserly as 35¢ per day, according to former workers interviewed by TIME.
“The entire system is designed to suppress us,” Bakitali says in Almaty,
Kazakhstan, where he escaped in May.
The result is dystopian. When every aspect of life is under constant
scrutiny, it’s not just “bad” behavior that must be avoided. Muslims in
Xinjiang are under constant pressure to act in a manner that the CCP would
approve. While posting controversial material online is clearly reckless,
not using social media at all could also be considered suspicious, so
Muslims share glowing news about the country and party as a means of
defense. Homes and businesses now feel obliged to display a photograph of
China’s President Xi Jinping in a manner redolent of North Koreans’ public
displays for founder Kim Il Sung. Asked why he had a picture of Xi in his
taxi, one Uighur driver replied nervously, “It’s the law.”
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The Quds Force commander was the face of Iran's regional ambitionsBesides
the surveillance cameras, people are required to register their ID numbers
for activities as mundane as renting a karaoke booth. Muslims are forced
from buses to have their IDs checked while ethnic Han Chinese passengers
wait in their seats. At intersections, drivers are ushered from their
vehicles by armed police and through Tera-Snap “revolving body detector”
equipment. In the southern Xinjiang oasis town of Hotan, a
facial–recognition booth is even installed at the local produce market. When
a system struggled to compute the face of this Western TIME reporter, the
impatient Han women queuing behind berated the operator, “Hurry up, he’s not
a Uighur, let him through.”
China strenuously denies human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, justifying its
surveillance leviathan as battling the “three evils” of “separatism,
terrorism and extremism.” But the situation has been described as a
“horrific campaign of repression” by the U.S. and condemned by the U.N.
Washington has also started sanctioning companies like HikVision whose
facial–recognition technology is ubiquitous across the Alaska-size region.
But Western aversion to surveillance is much broader and stems in no small
part from abuses like the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the
“scraped” personal information of up to 87 million people was acquired by
the political consultancy to swing elections around the world.
China is also rolling out Big Data and surveillance to inculcate “positive”
behavior in its citizens via a Social Credit system. In China’s eastern
coastal city of Rongcheng, home to 670,000 people, every person is
automatically given 1,000 points. Fighting with neighbors will cost you 5
points; fail to clean up after your dog and you lose 10. Donating blood
gains 5. Fall below a certain threshold and it’s impossible to get a loan or
book high-speed train tickets. Some Chinese see the benefit. High school
teacher Zhu Junfang, 42, enjoys perks such as discounted heating bills and
improved health care after a series of good works. “Because of the Social
Credit system, vehicles politely let pedestrians cross the street, and
during a recent blizzard people volunteered to clear the snow to earn extra
points,” she says.
WORLDMysterious Illness in China Not SARS: Authorities
Such intrusive government is anathema to most in the West, where aversion to
surveillance is much broader and more visceral. Whether it’s our Internet
browser history, selfies uploaded to social media, data scavenged from
fitness trackers or smart-home devices possibly recording the most intimate
bedroom conversations, we are all living in what’s been dubbed a
“surveillance economy.” In her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,
Shoshana Zuboff describes this as “human experience [broken down into data]
as free raw material for commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and
sales.”
When it comes to facial recognition, resistance is intense given the huge
potential for indiscriminate data harvesting. The E.U. is reviewing
regulations to give its citizens explicit rights over use of their
facial-recognition data. While tech giants Microsoft and Amazon have already
deployed the technology, they are also calling for clear legal parameters to
govern its use. Other than privacy, there are equality issues too. According
to a study by MIT Media Lab, facial-recognition software correctly
identified white men 99% to 100% of the time, but that dipped as low as 65%
for women of color. Civil-liberties groups are especially uneasy since
facial recognition, despite its widespread use by American police, is rarely
cited as evidence in subsequent court filings. In May, San Francisco became
the first major U.S. city to block police from using facial–recognition
software.
Even in China, where civil liberties have long been sacrificed for what the
CCP deems the greater good, privacy concerns are bubbling up. On Oct. 28, a
professor in eastern China sued Hangzhou Safari Park for “violating consumer
privacy law by compulsorily collecting visitors’ individual
characteristics,” after the park announced its intention to adopt
facial–recognition entry gates. In Chongqing, a move to install surveillance
cameras in 15,000 licensed taxicabs has met a backlash from drivers. “Now I
can’t cuddle my girlfriend off duty or curse my bosses,” one driver grumbles
to TIME.
WORLDChina Sentences Christian Pastor to 9 Years in PrisonRussia’s election
meddling around the world highlights the risks of commercially harvested
data being repurposed for nefarious goals. It’s a message taken to heart in
Hong Kong, where millions have protested over the past five months to push
for more democracy. These demonstrators have found themselves in the
crosshairs after being identified via CCTV cameras or social media.
Employees for state airline Cathay Pacific have been fired and others
investigated based on evidence reportedly gleaned via online posts and
private messaging apps.
This has led demonstrators to adopt intricate tactics to evade Big Brother’s
all-seeing eye. Clad in helmets, face masks and reflective goggles, they
prepare for confrontations with the police with military precision. A
vanguard clutch umbrellas aloft to shield their activities from prying eyes,
before a second wave advances to attack overhead cameras with tape, spray
paint and buzz saws. From behind, a covering fire of laser pointers attempts
to disrupt the recordings of security officers’ body-mounted cameras.
Fending off the cameras is just one response. When Matthew, 22, who used
only his first name for his own safety, heads to the front lines, he always
leaves his regular cell phone at home and takes a burner. Aside from
swapping SIM cards, he rarely reuses handsets multiple times since each has
a unique International Mobile Equipment Identity digital serial number that
he says police can trace. He also switches among different VPNs—software to
mask a user’s location—and pays for protest–related purchases with cash or
untraceable top-up credit cards. Voice calls are made only as a last resort,
he says. “Once I had no choice but to make a call, but I threw away my SIM
immediately afterward.”
The Hong Kong government denies its smart cameras and lampposts use
facial-recognition technology. But “it really comes down to whether you
trust institutions,” says privacy expert Tsui. For Matthew, the risks are
real and stark: “We are fighting to stop Hong Kong becoming another
Xinjiang.”
Ultimately, even protesters’ forensic safeguards may not be enough as
technology advances. In his Beijing headquarters, Huang Yongzhen, CEO of AI
firm Watrix, shows off his latest gait-recognition software, which can
identify people from 50 meters away by analyzing thousands of metrics about
their walk—even with faces covered or backs to the camera. It’s already been
rolled out by security services across China, he says, though he’s
ambivalent about privacy concerns. “From our perspective, we just provide
the technology,” he says. “As for how it’s used, like all high tech, it may
be a double-edged sword.”
Little wonder a backlash against AI-powered surveillance is gathering pace.
In the U.S., legislation was introduced in Congress in July that would
prohibit the use of facial recognition in public housing. Japanese
scientists have produced special glasses designed to fool the technology.
Public campaigns have railed against commercial uses—from Ticket-master
using facial recognition for concert tickets to JetBlue for boarding passes.
In May, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez linked the
technology to “a global rise in authoritarianism and fascism.”
Back in Chongqing, shopkeeper Li Hongmei sees only the positives. She says
the public CCTV cameras right outside her convenience store didn’t stop a
spate of thefts, so she had six cameras installed inside the shop. Within
days, she says, she nabbed the serial thief who’d been pilfering milk from
her shelves. “Chinese people don’t care about privacy. We want security,”
she says. “It’s still not enough cameras. We need more.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arn Specter, 1201 N. Harrison St. Apt.923
Wilmington, DE, 19806, 267-693-5185
WRITE TO CHARLIE CAMPBELL AT CHARLIE.CAMPBELL at TIME.COM.
From: Arn specter
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2020 11:09 PM
Subject: The Fight for Our Faces, Harsh Surveillance in China Revealed
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