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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

#52
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…

Even if it gets built, I can count on thousands of my countrymen to install it improperly, lose the documents, mail the cheques late, accidentally lose equipment, and fail to plug it in.

Don’t worry, systems like this are incredibly fragile. You could spray paint the cameras and force the government into an attrition war (I can spray paint them faster than you can replace them, and paint is cheap).

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

#53
post #50

There was a science fiction book who talked about putting a rock in your shoe to change your gait and avoid detection. What was it ?

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow. Of course then you just train a network to map between pebbled and unpebbled gaits and run that on any failed matches. So...

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

#54

This is not new, and is not unique to China. Any country with intelligence units, like the US, is using data mining to identify and control their citizens. It has become fashionable lately to imply that China is the only country doing these things, or somehow doing it in larger scale. Has everyone forgotten what Snowden revealed?

I think it's even more fashionable when there's criticism of any other country to respond with "whatabout the US".

No matter it's many faults the US is still a democracy with checks and balances.

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

#55
post #53
post #50

There was a science fiction book who talked about putting a rock in your shoe to change your gait and avoid detection. What was it ?

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow. Of course then you just train a network to map between pebbled and unpebbled gaits and run that on any failed matches. So...

Actually Double Star did this first back in ... 1954? I loved that book when I first read it.

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

#56
Surely gait analysis is part of the US arsenal as well. It's unique like a fingerprint and is used extensively by equestrian teams, etc., to detect shoe and health issues early to protect the investment in the horse. Many relevant health problems are visible early on as a change in the horse's gait.

It can be done with an accelerometer or a camera, and probably other kinds of sensors.

It could also be used for early diagnosis in humans, but is cost prohibitive for human preventative care use.

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

#58
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…

Even if it gets built, I can count on thousands of my countrymen to install it improperly, lose the documents, mail the cheques late, accidentally lose equipment, and fail to plug it in. Don’t worry, systems like this are incredibly fragile. You could spray paint the cameras and force the government into an attrition war (I can spray paint them faster than you can replace them, and paint is cheap).

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...

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

#59
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…

Even if it gets built, I can count on thousands of my countrymen to install it improperly, lose the documents, mail the cheques late, accidentally lose equipment, and fail to plug it in. Don’t worry, systems like this are incredibly fragile. You could spray paint the cameras and force the government into an attrition war (I can spray paint them faster than you can replace them, and paint is cheap).

I think fighting this will be much more like trying to stop Facebook shadow profiling you. You won't know where the surveillance devices will be, or rather, everything will be one.

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

#60
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…

The accelerometer in a smart phone might be sufficient to identify gait parameters which map to stress, relaxation etc. Why bother with cameras?

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).
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