Title: China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone - The Atlantic
Headings: China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone
Global
China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone

Content: This planned data-focused social credit system is only one facet of China’s rapidly expanding system of algorithmic surveillance. Another is a sprawling network of technologies, especially surveillance cameras, to monitor people’s physical movements. In 2015, China’s national police force—the Ministry of Public Safety— called for the creation of an “omnipresent, completely connected, always on and fully controllable” national video surveillance network. MPS and other agencies stated that law enforcement should use facial recognition technology in combination with the video cameras to catch lawbreakers. One IHS Markit estimate puts the number of cameras in China at 176 million today, with a plan to have 450 million installed by 2020. One hundred percent of Beijing is now blanketed by surveillance cameras, according to the Beijing Public Safety Bureau. The stated goal of this system is to capture and deter criminals. However, it also poses obvious and massive risks to privacy and the modicum of freedom Chinese citizens have managed to gain since the Maoist era. The penalties for small crimes seem unreasonable: Authorities in Fuzhou are publishing the names of jaywalkers in local media and even sending them to their employers.