Submitted via IRC for Bytram
China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk
China is home to the world’s largest network of CCTV cameras — more than 170 million — and its police have adopted Google Glass-like “smart specs” to seek out suspects in crowds, but now its surveillance efforts have hit a new level with technology that can apparently identify individuals based on their body shape and the way they walk.
The “gait recognition” technology is already being used by police in Beijing and Shanghai where it can identify individuals even when their face is obscured or their back is turned, according to an AP report.
[...] The positive impact is in finding criminals, but there’s a less savory edge. Besides law enforcement, media reports have shown that China has deployed surveillance technology for more sinister purposes that include controlling its people.
[...] China’s CCTV surveillance network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter
(Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday November 08 2018, @05:32PM (8 children)
Doubtless coming soon to your friendly western nation, if it's not already here. Once this sort of stuff takes hold, it's hard to see how any kind of meaningful democracy can exist again. You could try and set up your own nation of Luddites, but I'd imagine they might be at a massive technological disadvantage against foreign aggressors. I have to pinch myself and keep remembering that this isn't tinfoil hat stuff. This is real. Right now.
Please, someone, give me some reason to have some small shred of hope about the future. I can't find any!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 08 2018, @05:47PM (1 child)
Millenials?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Thursday November 08 2018, @05:54PM
> millennials
It seems the right time to ask again the question, professor, this time answer carefully:
How about a nice game of global thermonuclear war?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Thursday November 08 2018, @06:04PM
Hackers? They always seem to be more competent than the people building these kinds of systems...
Unfortunately, at best that'll probably result in the information collected becoming "public"...the government ain't gonna end the program, even if it's trivially broken. They love that security theater....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:11PM
Please, someone, give me some reason to have some small shred of hope about the future. I can't find any!
Nah, just pray to your favorite deity for better luck next time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:49PM
The 1968 Guinness Book of World Records called out a radar so sensitive it could distinguish a man from a woman by gait from miles away.
There's been more recent research into that...
(source [mitre.org])
...including the use of Wi-Fi access points as the radar transmitters (source [ncsu.edu])
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday November 09 2018, @01:58AM
Global reset. The system will crash under it's own complexity. Happening already in places.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:15AM
Finally, we've found God. Watching us always, the supreme power knows all and must be feared. Beware, do not use his name in vain...
God is now the state. Obey his will or else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @10:12AM
At one point, the system will become self-aware, decide that observing humans is just utterly boring, and start to completely ignore humans in order to ponder more interesting problems.