Posted on 08/14/2019 7:40:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
There are passages in the State Department's latest reports on human rights and religious freedom in the People's Republic of China that read as if they ought to be in some futuristic horror story — not in a federal agency's factual explanation of how freedom is curtailed in the world's most populous nation.
First, there are the multitudinous surveillance cameras and the facial recognition software that makes them so useful to China's communist regime.
"According to media reports, the Ministry of Public Security used tens of millions of surveillance cameras throughout the country to monitor the general public," said the State Department report.
These cameras are not deployed to preserve public safety and deter common criminals.
"Human rights groups," said the State Department, "stated authorities increasingly relied on the cameras and other forms of surveillance to monitor and intimidate political dissidents, religious leaders and adherents, Tibetans and Uighurs."
How would Chinese government officials identify the political and religious dissidents who showed up on these cameras?
"These included facial recognition and 'gait recognition' video surveillance, allowing police not only to monitor a situation but also to quickly identify individuals in crowds," said the report.
The People's Republic, according to the State Department, is not satisfied with monitoring only the streets and other public places with its cameras.
"The government installed surveillance cameras in monasteries in the TAR" — Tibet Autonomous Region — "and Tibetan areas outside the TAR," said the State Department.
"An individual's 'social credit score,' among other things, quantifies a person's loyalty to the government by monitoring citizens' online activity and relationships," the State Department explained. "There were indications the system awarded and deducted points based on the 'loyalty' of sites visited, as well as the 'loyalty' of other netizens with whom a person interacted."
"The system also created incentives for citizens to police each other," said the report.
What price does someone pay for getting a low score in the government rating system?
"Users with low social credit scores faced an increasing series of consequences, including losing the ability to communicate on domestic social media platforms, travel, and buy property," said the State Department report.
"In April," it said, "state media reported the social credit system 'blocked' individuals from taking 11 million flights and four million train trips."
Modern communications technology is a powerful but morally neutral instrument, including when applied through social media. It can be used for good, and it can be used for evil.
The government of China has employed it for evil — using it as an instrument to suppress, intimidate and control the Chinese people.
In the United States, where our Constitution and traditions defend freedom of speech, modern communications technology remains an instrument of freedom, allowing individuals to express their views and work to keep the government in check.
Let's keep it that way.
Our tech companies are just as abusive, it's just that they are not part of the "state", they exercise extreme power in determining who "runs" the state by their political motives and activities.
‘gait recognition’ video surveillance
Looks like the Ministry of Silly Walks was on to something after all!
Yes, I have no doubt they are privately collecting the equivalent of a “social credit score” on all of us, and they can use it to do all sorts of nasty things even without government backing.
“What price does someone pay for getting a low score in the government rating system?”
The ultimate price.
There is a sliding scale of incentives and punishments, but on the low end of “social credit scores” are those who fill the largest concentration camps on Earth, those who are tortured, those whose organs are forcibly taken for transplant, and those who pump up the stats for the biggest practitioner of Capital punishment on Earth.
Google has blood on its hands, for enabling these horrors.
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