China uses AI software to improve its surveillance capabilities
By Eduardo Baptista
China blanketed its cities with surveillance cameras in a 2015-2020 campaign it described as “sharp eyes” and is striving to do the same across rural areas. The development and adoption of the “one person, one file” software began around the same time.
Ohlberg, the researcher, said the earliest mention she had seen of one person, one file was from 2016, in a 200-page surveillance feasibility study by Shawan county in Xinjiang, for acquiring a computer system that could “automatically identify and investigate key persons involved in terrorism and (threatening social) stability.” A Shawan county official declined to comment.
In 2016, China’s domestic security chief at the time, Meng Jianzhu, wrote in a state-run journal that big data was the key to finding crime patterns and trends. Two years later, the system was referenced in a speech to industry executives given by Li Ziqing, then-director of the Research Center for Biometrics and Security Technology of the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences. Li also was chief scientist at AuthenMetric, a Beijing-based facial recognition company. Neither the research centre nor AuthenMetric responded to requests for comment.
“The ultimate core technology of big data’s (application to) security is one person, one file,” Li said in the 2018 speech at an AI forum in Shenzhen, according to a transcript of the speech published by local media and shared on AuthenMetric’s WeChat public account.
Source: China uses AI software to improve its surveillance capabilities | Reuters