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China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

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Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#91

Post by pbhjpbhj »

darawk wrote: post #17
wufufufu wrote: post #14

Top 10 technologies that sound scary when in an article starting with 'China'. I'm guessing one day we'll look back on these clickbaits and say they're racist.

In exactly what way is examining the authoritarian machinations of an authoritarian government 'racist'?

It seems likely other governments are using the same techniques and that our, I'm assuming, Western view of China as overbearingly authoritarian is tainted by a lot of cultural baggage: that the hostility of the Chinese security services towards their own population isn't as markedly different as we imagine it to be, because I - for example - have been carefully inculcated into the idea that Western governments are beneficent in their spying whilst other governments are malicious.

Decades of careful propagandised hatred for the Commies, or the Reds, or whatever slur, is hard to shake off too.

Or maybe you're right. But it's impossible to trust what our own governments say to us now.

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#92

Post by matz1 »

cimi_ wrote: post #46

Setting who wants to do this aside in order to avoid the constant 'X is worse than Y' arguments. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that in a near future we will have cameras that can do much more than identification on a massive scale. It may be easy to track things like how stressed, healthy, sober etc. people are without their consent or without them even noticing. And this would be precise , not speculativ…

> Would you live comfortably in this world?

if its not then I find a way to adapt. I accept that the only thing constant is change.

> Would you build this?

many2 reason or could be simply just because is exciting

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#93

Post by mrkstu »

mentat wrote: post #82
muraiki wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the goal is to police and/or suppress, using this system means that your targets don't have to carry a phone (and that you don't need to have access to the phone's data).

There are ways to induce people to carry the instruments of their surveillance with them (including phones).

If you do that, you can just simplify it down to an automatic bluetooth beacon that identifies you to the government- and if you don't carry one you're not allowed out in public.

I think they just don't want to be quite so blatant and obvious about it.

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#94

Post by diydsp »

jandrese wrote: post #12

I'm curious what the false positive rate is on this technology. It seems like a very noisy source to do correlations from.

I'm about to walk out the door so I can't look up papers, but I'm going to guess that it's based as much on dynamics as actual proportions of limbs. I would estimate the number of features to be on the scale of 2000-2010 era facial recognition. Dynamics would increase the number of dimensions, making it possible to separate two people with nearly identical features.

However, I do agree that inferring the proportions from video imagery at various angles and with various items of clothing is going to be challenging due to systemic distortion, e.g. inferring incorrect angle due to clothing.

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#95

Post by nabla9 »

dpwm wrote: post #41
nabla9 wrote: post #24

1. Gait detector is functional. 2. Countermeasure: use stone in the shoe, tape and other things to fool the gait detector. 3. Counter-countermeasure: detect artificial gaits. Everyone unrecognized with artificial gait is person of interest.

4. Counter-counter-countermeasure: wheels.

5. You don't have enough social credit for wheels.

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#96

Post by eponeponepon »

jbob2000 wrote: post #81
joe_the_user wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of camera designs that are essentially invisible. There can be plenty of those cameras that are installed in an overlapping fashion. If you want to go vandalizing the visible cameras, you might get entered into the arrest queue somewhere but indeed the police likely have more pressing issues. Sure, if the powers-that-be get nervous, any sweep would miss a lot of subversives while picking up plenty of…

I'm always so surprised by this community. In discussions about self driving cars and AI, everyone says "the tech isn't there yet", "it's weak because of X scenario", etc. But talk about cameras and surveillance? The tech is everywhere and can do everything with perfect accuracy and will come for you and your babies if you even sneeze wrong! . Come on. Having worked with security camera systems (I used to install the…

An authoritarian government that has declared as a matter of policy that the system on which it has spent billions is flawless doesn't need to worry that it isn't flawless. You'll say that wasn't you entering the subversive bookshop - but sorry, citizen, the system is infallible, so why are you lying to us?

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#97

Post by eponeponepon »

logfromblammo wrote: post #83
new_guy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the price of getting caught spray painting cameras is you and your family getting executed, or being sent to a 're-education camp', would you still do it? No matter how 'incredibly fragile' you perceive the system to be? This is already a daily reality for certain minorities in some countries already. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-a...

If that's the price for spray painting cameras, the marginal additional punishment for getting caught murdering those who are arresting the spray-painters is no longer sufficient to deter me from attempting it. Once you go full family execution, that's pretty much the limit of escalation against an individual. If you're willing and able to destroy everything and everyone I care about, there is no longer any bound you…

    > you may find that the ones who 
    > your pogrom are more willing to 
    > fight, and to fight dirty.
...neatly justifying your continuing oppression of them and others and investment in your security machine.

This stuff is frequently by design.

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#98

Post by jumelles »

wufufufu wrote: post #20
darawk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In exactly what way is examining the authoritarian machinations of an authoritarian government 'racist'?

The technology doesn't exist now, but one day we'll be able to equate the two non-facetious: Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say 'Chinese government can now...'

No, country names are very commonly used as synecdoches.

Re: China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk

#100

Post by joe_the_user »

eponeponepon wrote: post #96
jbob2000 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always so surprised by this community. In discussions about self driving cars and AI, everyone says "the tech isn't there yet", "it's weak because of X scenario", etc. But talk about cameras and surveillance? The tech is everywhere and can do everything with perfect accuracy and will come for you and your babies if you even sneeze wrong! . Come on. Having worked with security camera systems (I used to install the…

An authoritarian government that has declared as a matter of policy that the system on which it has spent billions is flawless doesn't need to worry that it isn't flawless. You'll say that wasn't you entering the subversive bookshop - but sorry, citizen, the system is infallible, so why are you lying to us?

Yeah, the consensus "here" is that deep learning, self-driving cars, all that, is "half-there". Presently, deep learning works, has a fairly high accuracy rate, in some percentage of cases. Sure, you can implement it right now in all sorts of places. The question is what the costs of the small but significant failure rate is going to be and who will pay that cost?. If some nobody pays the cost, well, a high failure rate may be fine with the institution that implements this.

With cars, the idea of a 0.1% chance of dying each time you step into a vehicle is terrifying - that's much higher than you get now, humans are actually amazingly good at driving. IE, fortunately, the system probably won't stomach the costs of bad self-driving cars.

But with the justice system spotting potential criminals, yeah, pulling in some innocents isn't going to bother a system with N degrees of repression. Most people in the justice system have no choice but to plea bargain now. Most people in the justice system are also guilty but the innocent-but-not-wealthy minority is generally SOL. And that is in our ostensible democracy, that's known by most sophisticated observers of the system, and only handful make an effort to change it. So a half-assed evidence gatherer of whatever sort will make lots of people happy, put lot of guilty and innocent people in jail and hardly needs great reliability. Indeed, with AI parole-granting systems, we're already there.

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