Big Brother is watching: Chinese city with 2.6m cameras is world's most heavily surveilled

When George Orwell wrote his satirical take down on the dangers of authoritarian governments 1984 was meant as a warning.  By allowing dictatorial governments to come to power through indifference or fear 1984 gives you insight as to how far government will go to maintain its hold on power.  Today we use 1984 as metaphor to describe our uneasiness with just how far our right to privacy has retreated.  Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have the ability to have access to all your personal details without your consent.  Further facial recognition is now being deployed in airports around the world.  Like all advances in technology the road to abuse will be unhindered by politicians, governments and the medias use of fear and paranoia as a logical argument to allow these abuses. In cities like London and Tokyo cameras are, to say the least ubiquitous.  For the Communist party of China undermining the rights of its citizens are the means to continued power.

Qiu Rui, a policeman in Chongqing, was on duty this summer when he received an alert from a facial recognition system at a local square. There was a high probability a man caught on camera was a suspect in a 2002 murder case, the system told him.


    

The city’s surveillance system scans facial features of people on the streets from frames of video footage in real time, creating a virtual map of the face. It can then match this information against scanned faces of suspects in a police database. If there is a match that passes a preset threshold, typically 60% or higher, the system immediately notifies officers. Three days later the police captured the man, who eventually admitted that he was the suspect.

Cases such as this, where facial recognition systems are used to help local police crack crime cases, are not unusual in the south-west China city, which recently ranked first in an analysis of the world’s most surveilled cities compiled by the UK-based technology research firm Comparitech. With 2.58m cameras covering 15.35 million people – equal to one camera for every six residents – Chongqing has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world for its population, beating even Beijing, Shanghai and tech hub Shenzhen.

    

GOP Nationalism Shows George Orwell Is More Relevant Than Ever (video)

"As we confront a rise in nationalism, he reminds us nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism," CNN correspondent John Avlon said.

In John Avlon's Reality Check segment, he talked about why George Orwell is more relevant than ever.

"For a guy who has been dead for nearly 70 years, George Orwell has never been hotter. The sales of his dystopian novel 1984 surged to the after President Trump's inauguration. With alternative facts and fake news, Orwell raises his head again. 'The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final most essential command.' Sound familiar?

What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.

Sean Spicer Is The New Head Of The Ministry Of Truth

Given how many times the cliche of 1984 and the current state of the world have been used over the outrage of the day one might feel like you're just crying wolf.   Then along comes the Trump administration.

When Sean Spicer held his first official press conference on Saturday, when he came out and chastised the press over how many people had attended Donald Trump inauguration  on Friday.  Pictures compared Obama's first inauguration which clearly showed that his was clearly better attended.  With estimates stating  that 1.8 million people celebrated his first inauguration compared to the 250,000 for Donald Trump.


On Sunday Kellyanne Conway one of Trump's senior aides  appearing on the NBC News program Meet The Press when asked by presenter Chuck Todd about that press conference she claimed that Sean Spicer was using "alternative facts."   Like the Ministry Of Truth in 1984 Sean Spicer has decided that the truth is whatever the  Ministry claims it shall be.


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Channeling Orwell's 1984 China Creates Its Own Ministry Of Truth

China has announced the creation of its own version of 1984's Ministry of Truth.  Afraid that the Chinese people will be exposed to the "wrong" kinds of information next month all foreign media will no longer be allowed to publish any content online.  All media within its borders wishing to publish anything online must be a wholly owned Chinese company and seek approval from the appropriate ministry.  Just think a book published as a fictional satirical look at the realities of authoritarian governments has become reality.  Given the Chinese government's penchant for paranoia and fear of outside influences the next step will be to introduce Newspeak as further means of controlling the Chinese people's thoughts.  If they take it to its ultimate conclusion they will introduce Thoughtcrime  as chronicled by Philip K. Dick in his short story The Minority Report.      

Per the Guardian:

A new directive issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has said that companies which have, at least in part, foreign ownership will be stopped from publishing words, pictures, maps, games, animation and sound of an “informational and thoughtful nature” – unless they have approval from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. 

This means only companies wholly Chinese owned will be able to publish online, subject to strict self-censorship in line with the government’s views.

The new regulation states: “Sino-foreign joint ventures, Sino-foreign cooperative ventures and foreign business units shall not engage in online publishing services.”

It is the communist republic’s latest move to tighten control over what its people can view on the internet and highlights the increasingly restrictive political climate in China, where the leadership has sought to rein in public speech and thought.