10/13/2017

Police state China: People’s Republic relies on total control

A nightmare for civil rights activists and data protectionists: China is planning to misuse face recognition technology to impede demonstrations and to identify regime critics (Press Release)

Since 2015 the Ministry of State Security initiated the development of a comprehensive face recognition system that is able to identify every single one of the 1.3 billion citizens of the country within three seconds. Photo: pixabay.com

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) warns that China is planning to misuse artificial intelligence to persecute regime critics. “Chinese state security is relying on face recognition technology and on comprehensive satellite monitoring as a means to stifle the Uyghur and the Kazakh peoples’ protests against human rights violations, especially in the region of Xinjiang / East Turkestan,” stated Ulrich Delius, the STP’s director, in Göttingen on Friday. “This is a nightmare for civil rights activists and data protectionists – it’s worse than the horror scenarios of George Orwell’s novel 1984.”


Chinese press reports state that, in 2015, the Ministry of State Security initiated the development of a comprehensive face recognition system that is able to identify every single one of the 1.3 billion citizens of the country within three seconds. The software is already supposed to have a success rate of 90 percent. China’s leading high-tech enterprises are working for the Communist Party (KP). More than 35 major technology companies have already set up party committees in their companies, eager to show their loyalty to the KP. They are planning to invest 15 billion US dollars in the development and the operation of the artificial intelligence system. On September 21, 2017, Mr. Meng Jianzhu, Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party – who is also responsible for security issues – stated that artificial intelligence must also be used in the struggle against terrorism and to impede demonstrations.


The Uyghurs and the Kazakhs are already closely monitored by state security. For example, since February 2017, all vehicle owners have to equip their vehicles with a GPS-device so that they can be located any time. Anyone who doesn’t comply with the provision has to pay a fine – and will henceforth be rejected at petrol stations. Further, the authorities had decided that, as of August 21, the data of all Uyghur and Kazakh vehicle owners are specifically recorded and checked by the vehicle registration authorities.


“For months now, we have been noticing that the authorities are collecting data from Uyghurs in East Turkestan – in an unprecedented manner. According to employees, the agencies were ordered to do so. This is a bad sign for a country that doesn’t even have independent data protection, let alone separation of powers or an independent jurisdiction. Over the last few months, China’s state security authorities penned up 3,000 Uyghurs in rehabilitation camps,” said Delius.

Headerphoto: pixabay.com