Chinese surveillance grows stronger with technology that can recognise people from how they walk

December 8, 2018 Comments Off

Originally published by The Telegraph on November 6, 2018

Chinese cities are rolling out a new “gait recognition” software that identifies people using their silhouettes and how they walk, even if their faces are obscured, in the latest tightening of the country’s security.

Developed by Chinese firm Watrix, the technology can identify a person as far as 50 metres away by analysing how they carry themselves, regardless of whether their back is turned or their face is covered.

While the software isn’t yet capable of detecting people in real time, the company claims it can search an hour’s worth of footage in ten minutes with a 94 percent accuracy rate.

In the long run, such technology could supplement facial recognition, which relies on high-resolution images of a person’s face to work properly. It is widely used in China including on public streets, transit stations and airport immigration.

Authorities are already using the Watrix software in Beijing and Shanghai to collar suspects or identify jaywalkers.

Officials have also expressed interest in the program in Xinjiang, a western Chinese province where the UN estimates as many as one million people are detained in a broad crackdown against Muslim minorities.

On Tuesday, countries including the UK and the US raised concerns over China’s actions in Xinjiang, calling for Beijing to abolish detention camps for Muslim minorities that Chinese officials have called “vocational training centres.”

Other nations also raised worries over freedom of expression in the four-year UN review of China’s human rights record.

“It would have been good to hear countries speak out about the tools like digital surveillance used to restrict human rights,” said Frances Eve, a researcher for the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders , a coalition of rights groups.

These biometric tools are giving shape to China’s high-tech future, where artificial intelligence developments – often from government-supported research – are fuelling the creation of a vast national surveillance system, dubbed the “Golden Shield Project”, to keep tabs on the country’s 1.4 billion people.

Spending on China’s domestic security has tripled over the last decade, hitting 1.24 trillion yuan (£137 billion) last year.

In Xinjiang alone, security-related construction more than doubled in 2017, according to analysis by the Jamestown Foundation, a US think tank.

Chinese authorities say these advancements will mean a safer and better country for its people, and can be used for a wide variety of purposes.

A Chinese insurer recently rolled out facial recognition software capable of analysing the micro-expressions of loan applicants in efforts to combat financial fraud. And gait recognition technology could be used to detect intruders in a home.

But critics cite a lack of debate over privacy rights, and the potential for these technologies to be abused by China’s ruling Communist Party.

“States have an obligation to provide their citizens with public security, but not at the expense of fundamental human rights,” Sophie Richardson, the China director for non-profit Human Rights Watch, told The Telegraph.

“Much of this technology gathers information about people without their knowledge and consent,” Ms Richardson says. “They have no way of knowing until it’s somehow being used against them. There is no effective way of pushing back against that.”