Dark Data: China
- Milan Gary
- Feb 15, 2018
- 2 min read
Is China system of surveillance what the US system is striving for?
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Twelve Days in Xinjiang
Too start, let me just say that this reading made it seem as though the residents of China have no chance or right to dispute the implementation of surveillance and data collection. In Xinjiang all stores were forced to install a surveillance system. They were told to do so, so that it would reduce the risk of a terrorist attack. They are targeting this specific part of China due to the fact that Muslim Uighurs mainly dwell in Xinjiang. There is a conscious bias here, that immediately criminalizes a group of people without proof of any crime. That’s simply unfair. These surveillance measures are making innocent people feel like victims within their own country. When comparing China to India, China definitely has the infrastructure to backup its intense data collection process and surveillance. “Unified Combat Platforms” means computer systems that analyze surveillance data. One would assume that that word ’Combat’ is used to describe a platform that defends China from foreign threats, but within this context it seems to only be applied against their own people.
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Police, police, police. This article made it seem as though facial recognition and surveillance exist in China mainly to aid the police force. The police force and government seem to want to both illuminate crime and eliminate it. They can claim this to be the soul motive, but other people can reproduce this sort of technology who are not part of the police force or government. This ‘smile to pay’ is pretty innovative and got me thinking. What if facial recognition becomes old news and this form of emotional recognition can be made but not from the face, from vital signs? Instead of seeing a face you can see their biological levels and these levels will then go on to tell the motive of the individual. Now that, would be wild. This article states the difference between the US system of surveillance and the Chinese system of surveillance by claiming that the US uses it to track social activists, ethnic groups, etc. while China uses the system to track every aspect of society. I don’t agree with this. By placing advanced and intense surveillance within Xinjiang, they are already targeting a specific religious and ethnic group within China. To me, it seems like the US wants to be at the level of China in terms of surveillance but they know the ethical repercussions of such and the weight of human rights which reigns so heavily within this nation. This article uses the term, “deep learning”, what does that mean? I looked more into and supposedly it’s a term used to describe this idea of hierarchical learning. So, based on machine learning it’s the method that focuses on learning data representation instead of task specific algorithms.
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