Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Chinese Developing Facial Scanning To "Detect Journalists and Other ‘People of Concern’.”

 From the BBC:

China surveillance of journalists to use 'traffic-light' system
The Chinese province of Henan is building a surveillance system with face-scanning technology that can detect journalists and other "people of concern".

Documents seen by BBC News describe a system that classifies journalists into a "traffic-light" system - green, amber and red.

Journalists in the "red" category would be "dealt with accordingly", they say.

The Henan Public Security Bureau has not responded to a request for comment.

The documents, discovered by the surveillance analyst firm IPVM, also outline plans to surveil other "people of concern", including foreign students and migrant women.

Human Rights Watch said: "This is not a government that needs more power to track more people... especially those who might be trying to peacefully hold it accountable."

'Thematic libraries'

The documents, published on 29 July, are part of a tendering process, encouraging Chinese companies to bid for a contract to build the new system, won, on 17 September, by NeuSoft.

NeuSoft has not responded to BBC News request for comment.

The system includes facial-recognition technology linked to thousands of cameras in Henan, to alert authorities when a "person of concern" is located....

....MUCH MORE

I was under the impression the Chinese could already do this. From December 2017:

BBC Journalist Attempts To Evade Chinese Surveillance: It Took 7 Minutes For CCTV To Locate Him
In a city (Guiyang) of 3.5 million....