Authorities in China’s Henan province have created a facial recognition system to monitor journalists and other “people of concern.” Writes about it BBC…
According to the documents, the system is connected to thousands of surveillance cameras across the province.
One of the groups of interest to the Henan Public Security Bureau are journalists, including foreign ones. They were divided into three levels of “danger”:
- red – are of greatest concern;
- yellow – cause widespread concern;
- green – harmless.
If journalists classified in the red or yellow category book a ticket to travel to the province, the system will notify the local authorities.
Another group of people that came under the supervision of the system are foreign students. They will be divided into “excellent”, “normal” and “unstable”.
“The safety assessment is carried out with an emphasis on the daily attendance of foreign students, exam results, country of arrival and adherence to school discipline,” the documents say.
Educational institutions were obliged to notify the authorities about students with safety problems.
The system is also designed to track women migrants. It is being integrated with the National Immigration Bureau, the Ministry of Public Security and the Henan Provincial Police.
In addition, other sources of information to track “people of concern” are planned to be added to the system, including data from smartphones, social networks, information about cars, booking tickets and hotels, as well as publicly available photos.
The provincial authorities did not comment on the information.
As a reminder, in March, Facebook blocked a group of hackers from China who used a platform to spy on Uyghur journalists and activists.
In May, a software engineer talked about testing emotion recognition systems in police stations on Xinjiang residents.
In July, the United States imposed sanctions on Chinese AI companies for violating Uyghur rights.
