China's 'Big Brother surveillance' to dwarf UK
Pastor Dale Morgan
China's 'Big Brother surveillance' to dwarf UK*
By Richard Spencer, Beijing Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:52pm BST 15/08/2007
China has launched an ambitious "Big Brother" surveillance programme
using everything from closed circuit television systems that can
recognise faces to identity card computer chips to monitor its population.
A high-tech security company has been awarded a contract for the first
phase of a scheme to encode computer chips for the residence permits all
Chinese citizens must carry, starting in the southern city of Shenzhen,
near Hong Kong.
The government will use the chips to control the whereabouts of its
hundreds of millions of migrant workers. But they will also store data
on the number of their children under the one-child policy, education
records and ultimately medical and credit histories.
The company is already setting up television systems throughout the city
armed with "intelligent surveillance" software that can recognise faces.
Police hope eventually to combine the two systems to provide complete
surveillance.
Shenzhen is being used as a testing ground for part of an
all-encompassing security system known as the Golden Shield Project.
This also includes computer and mobile phone monitoring through the
so-called "Great Firewall" of internet censorship.
Shenzhen is the most developed city in China, having been turned from a
village 30 years ago into a pioneer of the country's "special economic
development zones".
It now has a population of more than 12 million - almost twice as many
as Hong Kong, on whose border it lies and which it was set up to imitate.
Per head it is the richest city in China but it suffers from widespread
crime and prostitution. Virtually all its population has migrated from
elsewhere, a major social issue in China, where residence permits
assigned at birth dictate where you can live.
The closed circuit television system and residence card chips will be
provided by China Public Security Technology, run by Chinese
entrepreneurs but registered in Florida.
More than 20,000 new cameras will be installed, according to the New
York Times. They will be integrated with 180,000 already set up.
Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, was the first to test the new system
when he passed through immigration at the Shenzhen port on his return
from a visit to Hong Kong.
But the extent of Golden Shield has alarmed human rights groups, who say
it extends control over all aspects of people's lives to authorities
subject to little or no accountability.
Some of the data the authorities intend to retain on the new identity
cards includes the owner's police record; employment history; landlord's
telephone number; educational record; medical insurance status and
ethnicity.
While Britain is known around the world for its surveillance culture due
to the soaring numbers of CCTV cameras, human rights activists said the
scale and sophistication of the Shenzhen project dwarfed the UK.
"I don't think they are remotely comparable, and even in Britain it is
quite controversial," said Dinah PoKempner of Human Rights Watch.
The US has announced that it is to expand the use of spy satellites for
domestic surveillance, turning its "eyes in sky" inward to combat
terrorism and eventually for law enforcement.