China's 'Sharp Eyes' Program Aims To Surveil 100% of Public Space (medium.com) 85
schwit1 shares a report: One of China's largest and most pervasive surveillance networks got its start in a small county about seven hours north of Shanghai. In 2013, the local government in Pingyi County began installing tens of thousands of security cameras across urban and rural areas -- more than 28,500 in total by 2016. Even the smallest villages had at least six security cameras installed, according to state media. Those cameras weren't just monitored by police and automated facial recognition algorithms. Through special TV boxes installed in their homes, local residents could watch live security footage and press a button to summon police if they saw anything amiss. The security footage could also be viewed on smartphones.
In 2015 the Chinese government announced that a similar program would be rolled out across China, with a particular focus on remote and rural towns. It was called the "Xueliang Project," or Sharp Eyes, a reference to a quote from communist China's former revolutionary leader Mao Zedong who once wrote that "the people have sharp eyes" when looking out for neighbors not living up to communist values. China's next five-year plan, which covers 2021 to 2025 (PDF), places specific emphasis on giving social governance to local municipalities via the grid system, as well as building out even more security projects, to "strengthen construction of the prevention and control system for public security." This means the future of China's surveillance apparatus likely looks a lot like Sharp Eyes: More power and social control given to local governments, so neighbors watch neighbors.
In 2015 the Chinese government announced that a similar program would be rolled out across China, with a particular focus on remote and rural towns. It was called the "Xueliang Project," or Sharp Eyes, a reference to a quote from communist China's former revolutionary leader Mao Zedong who once wrote that "the people have sharp eyes" when looking out for neighbors not living up to communist values. China's next five-year plan, which covers 2021 to 2025 (PDF), places specific emphasis on giving social governance to local municipalities via the grid system, as well as building out even more security projects, to "strengthen construction of the prevention and control system for public security." This means the future of China's surveillance apparatus likely looks a lot like Sharp Eyes: More power and social control given to local governments, so neighbors watch neighbors.
Amateurs (Score:5, Insightful)
If they'd let private companies do this for them in pieces, like Amazon Ring, Nextdoor etc, nobody would bat an eye or even notice until the whole country had been blanketed by government-accessible surveillance and reporting systems.
Re: Amateurs (Score:2)
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Does Goatse count as a lethal weapon?
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maybe.
but lighting a single candle is more efficient
Re: Amateurs (Score:1)
Roseanne's just gonna become the new Winnie the Poo.
A sad day (Score:2)
for public urinators and public masturbators.
Re: A sad day (Score:1)
Re: Amateurs (Score:2)
In China it is illegal to bat an eye.
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don't be a naive fool. the "privately run company" can easily be contracted (if not totally subverted) by the state.
no one "wants" to go to prison, and yet we have privately-operated prisons. if the united states government had the authority and operating mores of the chinese, you can bet your ass we would have an industry of "privately run companies" providing the services of espionage, kidnapping, torture and organ extraction.
No need (Score:2)
Animals trapped in cages give up the will to live (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Animals trapped in cages give up the will to l (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? Singapore seems to be doing fine.
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"Singapore’s population conundrum"
https://www.asiapathways-adbi.... [asiapathways-adbi.org]
"Animals Need More Freedom, Not Bigger Cages"
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
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That's data cherry picking. Singapore's population is actually stable or growing by around 1%. Look at the population growth statistics.
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That article shows that population growth stalls when there is economic prosperity .. it has nothing to do with surveillance since they didn't have crazy surveillance until more recently than that article.
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From the article itself:
Population increasing steadily every year from
2002: 4.176 million, to
2011 at 5.183 Million
Referring to their references
Population in SG:
1960: 1.646 M
1970: 2.074 M
1980: 2.413 M
1990: 3.047 M
2000: 4.027 M
So, yes. Population is growing steadily for over 50 years.
Re: Animals trapped in cages give up the will to (Score:1)
Just stop it. You could look more like a Chinese inner party member if you were a troll that fakes it.
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Great Britain is doing well too.
Remember history (Score:1)
Expect population declines in surveilled societies, either from people leaving the country or from people deciding they don't want to have kids.
Are you old enough to remember, in the 80s, where Americans like to say "Planned economies will never be as efficient as free market economies!", "Government owned companies will never be as efficient as private companies!", so eventually Soviet Union will decline? I remembered, and so I laughed hilariously when I heard now Americans say Chinese companies are winning unfairly against US companies *because* they are government owned. LOL!
The point is, you can keep saying these things without any evidence,
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Except there's always a fraction of the population that is angered more and more by this, and has the will to do something about it -- which is how resistance movements and revolutions happen.
I know it would cause chaos in the world, but I hope for a Chinese revolution that kicks their shitty human-and-civil-rights disregarding draconian authoritarian government to the curb and embraces some form of democracy. The path they're on now is not good for humans at all.
1984 (Score:2)
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, you could escape surveillance by going out in the countryside and speaking in a low whisper. It seems that the Chinese have closed that loophole.
Re: 1984 (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, looking at all your comments... Do you literally actually work for the Chinese government, or are you just 13 yeara old and got no experience nor clue but a lot or confidence? Or just trolling?
It's literally people like you who are the problem.
There have always been dictator types and there always will be. It's whether people let them do what they want that makes all the difference.
Re: 1984 (Score:2)
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White noise generators still effective?
In the ultimate authoritarian state, which appears to be what the Chinese are aiming for, posession of a white noise generator will earn you a visit from the police, as will use of any encryption that the state cannot read.
Re: 1984 (Score:1)
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google, facebook, amazon already vastly exceed 1984
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google, facebook, amazon already vastly exceed 1984
Not really. Google, Facebook and Amazon.com do not watch you performing your morning exercises, and do not require a daily two-minute hate.
Good (Score:2)
I see nothing wrong with this. Of course if they dare infringe on my rights to privacy in my home and private areas thereâ(TM)ll be hell to pay.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Good (Score:1)
As a German: yes.
You omitted the steps in-between, where you did not go "Do not dictator here. No dictatoring here.", instead saying "Good".
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China is, unfortunately, totalitarianism done by smart people. The end game is not to police your actions and thoughts, but to get *you* to police *yourself*.
Universal surveillance plays a key piece. They may not have the software or camera-watchers to inspect everywhere all the time, but you never know when you're being watched. Likewise the way China does laws, you never can be sure if you're breaking one. It's this uncertainty that ingrains the habit of self-policing.
Re: Good (Score:1)
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Re: Good (Score:1)
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I think In China everyone that enters your home if you live in an apartment has to have their face scanned.. you okay with that?
LOL, what?
Where do you come up with such stuff?
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Of course if they dare infringe on my rights to privacy in my home and private areas there'll be hell to pay.
It's their home, you only rent it. If in doubt, just try not paying the annual rent, a.k.a. property tax, and see how much time it takes for them to evict you and retake possession of their property to then rent it to someone else. Now, sure, if you do find somewhere, anywhere, that is truly yours, by all means, keep what you do private. But since until that happens you're on government property, where you live is all public place. So, prepare the lube, it'll hurt less that way. /sarcasm
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I heard the metal shavings were a special order directly from her office. The laptop recovered from there revealed emails that Sardi's and the National Guard specifically objected to this request, but they were both ignored. Something about it bolstering the troop's internal stores of iron and zinc and the environment. I don't know. Anyway, when the National Guard wanted to break ties with Sardi's, Pelosi got in the way of that too, and now they're forced to stick with them. It's too bad she wasn't there wh
Re: Put it in the Capitol (Score:1)
Metal shavings? WTF?
But honestly, rawness of meat is actuslly not a cause of sickness. Hygiene is. We Germans eat raw minced pork on bread rolls all the time. Like, some eat it literally every other day. (Look up "Mettbrötchen". It's awesome.) And Americans like their steaks bloody too. The French like boef tartare (raw minced beef, raw egg, etc). The Japanese eat sushi.
The meat of a healthy animal is sterile by definition. The difference lies in the butchering. We can eat our raw pork because we've go
Re: Put it in the Capitol (Score:2)
I feel sorry ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well, communist is the governing party's own self-proclaimed title—but sure, you could make the claim that the country is lacking some modern resemblance to other, more prototypical (former) communist countries.
Rather than resorting to personal attacks on others though, perhaps you could've instead put forth why you think "communist" is nothing but an antiquated misnomer.
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This never works (Score:5, Insightful)
Ceauescu's Romania tried this. Before that, the Staci. Before them, the Gestopo. Before that the KGB. The idea was always the same. Everyone spies on everyone else, your family, your friends, your neighbors, and reports it. In Romania even appearing in public with the wrong facial expression was reason to be "reported" (yes, "face crime", as it were ;). Indeed, everyone smiled for Ceauescu right up to the day they shot him.
In fact, how many of the above list are still around? Every last one ended in failure, because the society being made secure collapsed under the human social toll of the security imposed. It may take a few generations, but every last society that went down this path ended in failure. All empires end from within, and this is one reason why. This is the lesson China will also learn...
Re: This never works (Score:2)
As for East Germany, ... I'd feel bad if the ciizens of China had to endure 40 years of this living nightmare before it ended.
It changes people. It changes societly. There will be people who don't even know what normal looks like. And not just normal US or whatever, but normal China before all this. The culture that will be lost...
At least the East Germans had West Germany to get them back to normal. But what would the Chinese have? Taiwan, hopefully.
How did you Romanians find back to normal life? Like, whe
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My point is you don't, and that's why those societies collapsed. For children born into such societies they learn early on to survive is to live their whole life with a false face, to never truly trust anyone, not your family, not your friends, nobody. The social damage is enormous if not always visible, and it does last long after the actual cause is removed. Many of those who experience that may never find their way back to normal lives, it is future generations who never experienced that that must establ
Re: This never works (Score:1)
East Germany learned to get back to normal though.
As did Germany as a whole, after WWII.
Thinking about it, I guess it was an opportunity to re-invent oneselves. And then of course there are historians who dig up things so they can come back.
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Is that why? China seems to be huge, growing and thriving, not on a decline in any way I can see -- unless there's evidence you have that I'm not familiar with.
Yes, but the cost! (Score:1)
The cost of relearning history is always borne by the socio-economic underclasses. It doesn't matter if the regime falls, or how long it takes, there's power to be exercised and money to made in the interim, and the vast majority of political minions are never called to account for their crimes.
Even 30 years after the end of the cold war, there are yet socialists and communists (though not as many) who still have not learned the lessons of authoritarian governments. Bernie "but it will be different thi
Re: Yes, but the cost! (Score:2)
Re: This never works (Score:5, Informative)
This is an amazing feat. But there's a long way to go:
So long as the CCP keeps improving the lives of the Chinese people, are is perceived to be, the people will continue to tolerate this surveillance and control bullshit.
Quotes from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/562... [bbc.co.uk]
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It's only an amazing feat if you view it as an accomplishment of government, rather than government being the problem and getting off the back of the people.
With corruption and dictatorship, a sickly economy putters along, centuries past when other, freer nations lifted themselves up through free market industrialization.
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You have your order wrong, the KGB was started in the 50's. It had forerunners in NKVD and host of other entities spawned by Lenin and his cronies who never met a man they could trust. The Gestapo was Germany in the 1930s.
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Where did you meet Staci and did she ever speak to you about her family in the West?
Joke aside, I'm not sure the Stasi was the reason for the turn of events. Closing the borders and the constant advertising made by the West for product that you could not buy was much more annoying. People wanted to buy a bmw and visit the world, they couldn't care less that someone was writing down the exact time at which their kitchen lights were on...
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And that's why I find that potentially abhorrent too. It's only baby steps now, sure, but babies do grow up...
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Re: This never works (Score:2)
It won't work. (Score:1)
The citizens still are humans. If you want to kill everyone who doesn't conform once, you will be left with zero citizens.
And who's gonna watch them anyway?
So this is close to implosion.
If they stop it, or if they accelerate it, either way it's gonna end. And we can make them accelerate it too, if we can't stop them. So... *grin*
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Why do you think there was a previous story about us falling behind China in AI? There's your "watchers".
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Who's going to watch them? Bots. Facial recognition integrated with AI and other things the CCP needs to not fear their own shadow. The CCP is one of the biggest weenie organizations on the planet.
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And who's gonna watch them anyway?
The Stasi had about 2% of their population watching the other 40% of the population. These guys kept detailed records on about 5 million people.
Won't be long before... (Score:2)
... the cameras will be inside the apartments, too.
China is a communist state... (Score:1)
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Not very impressive (Score:2)
I could not find a spot in my town without a camera. That's just the way we live now.
This is what every government in the world (Score:2)
rat thy neighbour (Score:1)
soon to be china's biggest export product to the self-proclaimed
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In other news ... (Score:2)