How China is building nightmarish surveillance state with cameras checking emotions and tracking ‘social credit’ with AI
BIG Brother-like mass state surveillance is being developed by China with streets full of cameras that can monitor citizens' emotions and track their "social credit" scores.
The high tech systems will also help people snoop and rat on each other from the comfort of their homes — or on the go with their smartphones.
The Communist regime's nightmare-inducing plans involve installing spy cameras in all places and using artificial intelligence to calculate a person's "social score" which will determine benefits or punishments.
The sheer level of surveillance being planned is straight out of the dystopia created by author George Orwell in his book 1984, where the eyes of the state - Big Brother - are always watching you.
But now it is being made easy with 21st-century spy technology.
It comes as privacy campaigners told The Sun Online that China's success in developing technology not only threatens the human rights of Chinese citizens but people across the world.
Ms Peterson said: "Unlike prior programs, Sharp Eyes places surveillance capabilities in citizens’ hands and encourages their direct participation.
"This strategy echoes the surveillance mechanisms of the Cultural Revolution ( 1966 until 1976), the period from which Sharp Eyes derives its name."
Local residents meanwhile will have special TV boxes installed in their homes, according to One Eye.
This means they can watch live footage and press a button to summon the police if they saw anything amiss - with cams available to be viewed on smartphones.
This blocks access to a number of foreign websites, including Google-based services, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Great Fire Wall Of China
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has been tightening its grip on the country's heavily censored web which known to the rest of the world as the Great Wall of China.
YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook and western email accounts have been blocked - and all bloggers and influencers to have a state-approved credential before they are allowed to publish content.
Chinese citizens are also required to have their public online accounts verified by the shadowy Cyberspace Administration using personal information including IDs and phone numbers.
Authorities clearly identifying social media personalities will prevent users from “creating rumours online and damaging the stability and harmony of society”, authorities said.
Anyone discovered trying to get around the Great Firewall faces jail, under new laws.
China epic surveillance state has come under the spotlight during the Covid-19 pandemic which broke out just over year ago in the city of Wuhan.
While authorities have primarily used mobile location data and ID-linked tracing apps to flag people coming back from abroad for quarantine, the camera surveillance system has played a crucial role, according to officials, state media and residents.
The network has been used to trace the contacts of people confirmed as infected with the virus, and to punish businesses and individuals flouting restrictions.
But the digital dictatorship was also used to stifle criticism and track down and target people who speak out.
Just last week, a whistleblower was detained by Chinese cops for running a secret website exposing cover ups by the state in posts written in the Star Trek's fictional language Klingon.
Wuhan activist Chen Mei, 28, along with a group of others, was involved in a project aiming to uncover what was happening as the Covid had already begun to spread in China.
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The Terminus 2049 project was an open-source archive that keeps records of censored articles from Chinese media and in this case, was used to share information about the outbreak, in morse code or Klingon.
And last year, articles criticising China's handling of the pandemic that were posted online in morse code and Klingon, were deleted by censors.