Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 153 posts

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

#61

Post by majia »

mrich wrote: post #35

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.

> Wouldn't be surprised if they were overstated, so as to keep citizens in check.

This is a little stretching. Most Chinese audience can’t or won’t watch BBC.

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

#62

Post by megaremote »

mrich wrote: post #35

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.

> The BBC willingly plays along and does not even question the capabilities either way.

What should they do? Not run the story? It is of interest, it is scary to a lot of people. It does also warn people wanting to hide from it.

Should no one talk about this technology, or China's current capabilities? Do you think that would be better?

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

#63

Post by paganel »

nscalf wrote: post #31
zrobotics wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postulate: how does the US being able to more accurately track people via facial recognition make me meterialy safer as a US citizen? Because for me, that argument has a whiff of 'think of the children'. I don't think the NSA has done anything to make me safer, and I haven't seen any convincing proof to show they have done anything to help my safety. At this point, what is actually accomplished by the US military get…

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…

Crime never disappears completely, it just "sublimates" itself and becomes active in new "territories". You could say that the modern industrial society is way more secure and crime-free compared to the Dark Middle Ages, just to give an example, after all you can now pretty safely go from one town to the next 20 kilometers away without fear or getting robbed or worse (in most of the world's places, anyway).

But today, unlike 1000 years ago, we're also a couple of button-pushes away from almost total species annihilation (the effects of a a possible nuclear winter are yet to be determined exactly), to say nothing of the countless genocides perpetrated during the 20th century and into the 21st or about the the two world wars.

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

#64

Post by isostatic »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #58
rtpg wrote: post #4

It's not just about this, but given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. After WW2 the University of Tokyo banned weapons research from happening in its research labs. I think we can be drawing more lines on research like this and take a stand agains…

> given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. This is an interesting perspective. Facial recognition is routine among people, and generally not considered nefarious. Rather, it's important to know who people are for a large number of good reasons. The…

Because those are conciously produced when asked for? Otherwise they are inaccessible. There’s a massive difference.

The only way to avoid face recognition would be to wear something like a burka or maybe a hoodie. Two things that have been attacked over the last couple of decades.

And it’s not just governemts doing face recognition, at least with thoses there’s some semblance of democratic oversight - private companies with this data are far more insidious.

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

#65

Post by raxxorrax »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #58
rtpg wrote: post #4

It's not just about this, but given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. After WW2 the University of Tokyo banned weapons research from happening in its research labs. I think we can be drawing more lines on research like this and take a stand agains…

> given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. This is an interesting perspective. Facial recognition is routine among people, and generally not considered nefarious. Rather, it's important to know who people are for a large number of good reasons. The…

They don't draw similar criticism, because the scale and possible applications are not comparable.

You could say you are comparing a kitchen knife to an AK47.

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

#66

Post by xster »

mrich wrote: post #35

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.

There's such a funny mismatch of culture and display of poor international PR sense too.

Based on some cursory search, it looks like it's another one of those local-government-pioneered pilot/experiments [1] like the credit score (except there are dozens of cities in that pilot).

The second tier city local government, trying to tout their achievements at the national level, then goes on a PR spree [2] (probably to earn points for the local party secretary). They even proudly market it as "Guiyang has 'Skynet' everywhere. No matter where you go, there are eyes on you,". I can totally visualize the locals thinking, who wouldn't think this is cool and an indication of Guiyang finally being ready to join the ranks of the civilized world.

Meanwhile, nobody at the local level thinks (or has enough international context to know) that this is a huge negative rather than an achievement from the western perspective. They probably can't even wrap their heads around why wouldn't everyone want this. Smelling the big story, in goes the BBC also, presenting this story as this state of the iron curtain, straight as constructed from Xi's directives.

The 2 sides of the story are just living in very different worlds.

[1] http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1093864.shtml [2] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eoO1dqE...

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

#67

Post by chrischen »

lnsru wrote: post #53
chrischen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can bet they only demo things if they are 100% sure it will work (in a very controlled environment not unlike North Korean "tours"), and even then often it will fail because of Soviet-style bureaucratic incompetence.

I also demo only things, I am sure 100% it will work. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Every YouTube technical demo is repeated hundred times until perfect video is made to make an impression, it works 100%. That’s the purpose of demoing something. About bureaucratic incompetence I have no opinion.

Tell that to Microsoft haha.

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

#68

Post by raxxorrax »

nscalf wrote: post #31
zrobotics wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postulate: how does the US being able to more accurately track people via facial recognition make me meterialy safer as a US citizen? Because for me, that argument has a whiff of 'think of the children'. I don't think the NSA has done anything to make me safer, and I haven't seen any convincing proof to show they have done anything to help my safety. At this point, what is actually accomplished by the US military get…

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…

I don't think this wisdom will ever be applied, so for now I do support vandalism of CCTV. It is self defence because I am pretty sure my constitutions says that surveillance doesn't happen.

(Not based in the US)

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

#69

Post by h0h0h0h0111 »

chrischen wrote: post #36
mrich wrote: post #35

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.

You can bet they only demo things if they are 100% sure it will work (in a very controlled environment not unlike North Korean "tours"), and even then often it will fail because of Soviet-style bureaucratic incompetence.

Both your clauses seem to contradict one another

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

#70

Post by isostatic »

tluyben2 wrote: post #55
pacala wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation in China is dire. USA is not far behind. Does your neighbor have a Ring camera? Well, that watches the whole street and it is connected to a massive corporate data processing pipeline that is used for persistent tracking of advertisement subjects. Only need to tweak it a little bit for vastly different purposes. Oh, and we work hard to improve our far-field microphones connected to the same pipeline. To…

> Does your neighbor have a Ring camera? Well, that watches the whole street I was burgled recently and looking for cameras and alarm systems. I was asking the police who came to check the burglary and they explained that here (Spain) it is illegal to point cameras to anywhere ‘public’, so the situation you describe would be removed and fined here. My feeling at the time was that now I cannot protect my property adeq…

So large companies outsource the breaking of the law to minions, while getting all the benefits. They even make a profit from it!
Post reply on HN