It sounds to me as if the Chinese may have a leg up on the United States when it comes to snooping its citizens' business. I'm not worried though: The U.S. is never likely to allow such a blot to remain on its surveillance escutcheon.
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese surveillance firm is tracking the movements of more than 2.5 million people in the far-western Xinjiang
region, according to a data leak flagged by a Dutch internet expert.
An
online database containing names, ID card numbers, birth dates and
location data was left unprotected for months by Shenzhen-based
facial-recognition technology company SenseNets Technology Ltd,
according to Victor Gevers, co-founder of non-profit organization
GDI.Foundation, who first noted the vulnerability in a series of social
media posts last week.
Here’s more on the issue:
ReplyDeleteBEIJING — The authorities called it a free health check. Tahir Imin had his doubts.
They drew blood from the 38-year-old Muslim, scanned his face, recorded his voice and took his fingerprints. They didn’t bother to check his heart or kidneys, and they rebuffed his request to see the results.
“They said, ‘You don’t have the right to ask about this,’” Mr. Imin said. “‘If you want to ask more,’ they said, ‘you can go to the police.’”
Mr. Imin was one of millions of people caught up in a vast Chinese campaign of surveillance and oppression. To give it teeth, the Chinese authorities are collecting DNA — and they got unlikely corporate and academic help from the United States to do it.
NewYork Times 2019-02-21
China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.amp.html