China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

Going to note that I am largely against facial recognition tracking to us citizens before I say this post.

Being able to track and find individuals, anywhere in the US where there is a camera, will significantly reduce crime. Cameras would cover a larger swath of territory, and we would be able to find potential terrorists, criminal suspects, missing people, human traffic victims, etc. far more effectively. We would likely be able to identify people acting like they were about to commit a violent crime too, but that’s just an assumption based off my experience.

Does large scale surveillance help with making individuals safer? I think the answer is obviously yes. I disagree with it because it has significant side effects, and doesn’t address the underlying problems CAUSING cultural violence and international crime.

This article is 2 years old, but quite relevant to current situation.

Deep learning and computer vision has progressed quite a bit in the past 2 years, mainly due to incremental algorithmic advances / improved engineering. Unlike fundamental advances, these can be scaled up with increased investments in a more predictable way.

Face++, the unicorn company mentioned in this article, is actually the product division owned by Megvii, a machine learning startup based in mainland China. They are planning to IPO soon (see: https://reut.rs/2L7zzGn ) to raise more funds from overseas investors (hence IPO'ing in Hong Kong).

There's some irony when a China-based computer vision startup working on facial recognition technology used in Xinjiang is filing for IPO in Hong Kong, rather than in mainland China.

The interesting part is not the story itself, but that they chose to demo it to the BBC. Marketing at its best, they want everyone to be fully aware of their capabilities. Wouldn't be surprised if they were overstated, so as to keep citizens in check. The BBC willingly plays along and does not even question the capabilities either way.

This tech works, and the only reason we don't have this in the US is because of our cultural and political aversion to mass surveillance.

I'm genuinely curious of what this leads to in China, because this tech is easy enough to deploy if you're willing and politically able. What I'm cynical about is that I don't think China is competent enough to safeguard the data it collects, or forever keep it out of the "wrong hands" like the last guy in the video claims.

It's hard enough for US government agencies to protect data that should be privileged (police often run illegitimate checks on license plates), I can't imagine China can prevent its various factions from abusing this power.

It'd be ironic, but the incompetencies of their bureaucracy could actually lead to their own downfall by way of this technology (their mass surveillance apparatus) somehow getting coopted by dissidents. There's a misconception that China somehow has an iron grip over its people because it's authoritarian, but if that were true they'd have weeded out corruption.

It sure helps not to hand the tools directly to the oppressors.

Of course stopping all facial recognition doesn't suddenly make a totalitarian regime disappear. But having it makes some things way easier than it used to be.

For what? automatic tagging of faces in your photo library?