Ride the Lightning

Chinese Suspect Can’t Hide in Crowd of 60,000 People: Facial Recognition on Steroids

April 17, 2018

The Washington Post reported that a 31-year-old man, wanted by police, thought he would be safe going to an April 7th concert attended by 60,000 people. But a pair of police officers went directly to the man's seat and apprehended him. The man, identified only by his surname Ao, was reportedly wanted for "economic crimes." Details about Ao had been in a national database, and when he arrived at the stadium, cameras at the entrances with facial-recognition technology identified him — and then alerted authorities.

Law enforcement and security officials in China hope to use such technology to track suspects and even predict crimes. Ultimately, officials there want to create a comprehensive, nationwide surveillance system known as "Xue Liang," or "Sharp Eyes" to monitor the movements of its citizens.

At the back end, these efforts merge with a vast database of information on every citizen, a "Police Cloud" that aims to scoop up such data as criminal and medical records, travel bookings, online purchase and even social media comments — and link it to everyone's identity card and face.

The goal is to track where people are, what they are up to, what they believe and who they associate with — and ultimately even to assign them a single "social credit" score based on whether the government and their fellow citizens consider them trustworthy. Scary, huh?

If you click on the link above, you'll see people crossing the street identified by facial recognition with their identity shown as text bubbles – and check out the cool shades worn by the Chinese police – with facial recognition enabled.

China is way ahead of us – but for how long? It's an ominous question.

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