170-698: Mass surveillance in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the network of monitoring systems used by the Chinese central government to monitor Chinese citizens . It is primarily conducted through the government, although corporate surveillance in connection with the Chinese government has been reported to occur. China monitors its citizens through Internet surveillance , camera surveillance, and through other digital technologies. It has become increasingly widespread and grown in sophistication under General Secretary of
340-546: A digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services , and works by pinpointing and measuring facial features from a given image. Development began on similar systems in the 1960s, beginning as a form of computer application . Since their inception, facial recognition systems have seen wider uses in recent times on smartphones and in other forms of technology, such as robotics . Because computerized facial recognition involves
510-610: A national ID card and contains basic identifying information such as photograph, residential address, gender, ethnicity, date of birth and fingerprints of both thumbs embedded on an IC chip . Card information is stored within the National Population Basic Information Database ( Chinese : 全国人口基本信息数据库 ; pinyin : Quánguó rénkǒu jīběn xìnxī shùjùkù ) administered by the Ministry of Public Security , Ministry of Civil Affairs and
680-426: A $ 92 million settlement to a US lawsuit which alleged that the app had used facial recognition in both user videos and its algorithm to identify age, gender and ethnicity. The emerging use of facial recognition is in the use of ID verification services . Many companies and others are working in the market now to provide these services to banks, ICOs, and other e-businesses. Face recognition has been leveraged as
850-739: A 15-second video clip and taking multiple snapshots of the subject. That data is compared and analyzed with images from the police department's database and within 20 minutes, the subject can be identified with a 98.1% accuracy. In 2018, Chinese police in Zhengzhou and Beijing were using smart glasses to take photos which are compared against a government database using facial recognition to identify suspects, retrieve an address, and track people moving beyond their home areas. As of late 2017, China has deployed facial recognition and artificial intelligence technology in Xinjiang . Reporters visiting
1020-468: A 3D mesh mask is layered over the face. A variety of technologies attempt to fool facial recognition software by the use of anti-facial recognition masks . DeepFace is a deep learning facial recognition system created by a research group at Facebook . It identifies human faces in digital images. It employs a nine-layer neural net with over 120 million connection weights, and was trained on four million images uploaded by Facebook users. The system
1190-414: A Chinese erotic writer who wrote and sold a gay porn novel named Occupy online was sentenced to a ten-and-a-half-year prison sentence. As of 2019, conservative attitudes toward sex talk have remained standard amongst the general public. By 2018, the Chinese government had installed close to 200 million surveillance cameras across the country, which amounts to approximately one camera per seven citizens. At
1360-659: A Chinese multinational technology company, cooperated with China Southern Airlines to install the facial recognition technology in Nanyang Jiangying Airport , Henan , for boarding. Robot police have been installed in public places such as train stations, museums, and tourist attractions. Furthermore, the Chinese government uses big data technology in order to analyze and monitor people's online behavior, such as Sesame Credit, which ranks its users based on their online activities along with its previously mentioned functions. In connection with camera surveillance,
1530-574: A correction to its report in June 2019 stating that the Chinese company Megvii did not appear to have collaborated on IJOP, and that the Face++ code in the app was inoperable. In February 2020, following the Coronavirus outbreak , Megvii applied for a bank loan to optimize the body temperature screening system it had launched to help identify people with symptoms of a Coronavirus infection in crowds. In
1700-570: A flash and exposing the position of the camera. However, the databases for face recognition are limited. Efforts to build databases of thermal face images date back to 2004. By 2016, several databases existed, including the IIITD-PSE and the Notre Dame thermal face database. Current thermal face recognition systems are not able to reliably detect a face in a thermal image that has been taken of an outdoor environment. In 2018, researchers from
1870-940: A form of social control by restricting the area in which an individual and his or her children can obtain access to education, healthcare, housing, employment and or other government services. The system also acts as a convenient method for the state to exert collective punishment, i.e., individuals who commit or engage in acts of dissent may have their families arrested or detained for leverage. In recent years Hukou information has been utilized extensively to suppress dissent both at home and abroad in Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign , specifically Operation Fox Hunt in which suspects accused of corruption in China are coerced into returning home to face charges for fear of consequences which may befall their family and or extended relatives residing in country. The Ministry of Public Security manages
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#17327902181902040-516: A form of biometric authentication for various computing platforms and devices; Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" added facial recognition using a smartphone 's front camera as a means of unlocking devices, while Microsoft introduced face recognition login to its Xbox 360 video game console through its Kinect accessory, as well as Windows 10 via its "Windows Hello" platform (which requires an infrared-illuminated camera). In 2017, Apple's iPhone X smartphone introduced facial recognition to
2210-703: A friend in the United States was subsequently convicted on the charge of the crime "picking quarrels and provoking troubles". The Court documents showed that the Chinese police used a facial recognition system to identify Geng Guanjun as an "overseas democracy activist" and that China's network management and propaganda departments directly monitor WeChat users. In 2019, Protestors in Hong Kong destroyed smart lampposts amid concerns they could contain cameras and facial recognition system used for surveillance by Chinese authorities. Human rights groups have criticized
2380-499: A gallery of face images and then compress the face data, only saving the data in the image that is useful for face recognition. A probe image is then compared with the face data. One of the earliest successful systems is based on template matching techniques applied to a set of salient facial features, providing a sort of compressed face representation. Recognition algorithms can be divided into two main approaches: geometric, which looks at distinguishing features, or photo-metric, which
2550-479: A high signal-to-noise ratio . Face hallucination algorithms that are applied to images prior to those images being submitted to the facial recognition system use example-based machine learning with pixel substitution or nearest neighbour distribution indexes that may also incorporate demographic and age related facial characteristics. Use of face hallucination techniques improves the performance of high resolution facial recognition algorithms and may be used to overcome
2720-511: A high-level opinion document: "[Officials at] township, village and neighbourhood [level] shall be given administrative law enforcement powers...while existing law enforcement powers and resources shall be integrated". According to directives sent out in 2018, the grid system carves up city neighborhoods into a grid pattern containing 15-20 households per square, with each grid appointed a designated monitor who reports back on residents' affairs to local party committees. According to reporting by RFA
2890-443: A non-linear regression model that maps a specific thermal image into a corresponding visible facial image and an optimization issue that projects the latent projection back into the image space. ARL scientists have noted that the approach works by combining global information (i.e. features across the entire face) with local information (i.e. features regarding the eyes, nose, and mouth). According to performance tests conducted at ARL,
3060-483: A policy approach that combined centralized leadership with intense mass mobilization, and that this mode of governance is defined by continuous experimentation and improvisation. According to academics Jérôme Doyon and Chloé Froissart, the adaptive capacity resulting from a heritage of guerrilla warfare has made the CCP adept in dealing with uncertainty and has translated into a capacity to experiment first and then systemize
3230-495: A publication by Forbes, FDNA, an AI development company claimed that in the space of 10 years, they have worked with geneticists to develop a database of about 5,000 diseases and 1500 of them can be detected with facial recognition algorithms. In an interview, the National Health Authority chief Dr. R.S. Sharma said that facial recognition technology would be used in conjunction with Aadhaar to authenticate
3400-528: A similar program for domestic air travel during the security check process in the future. The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the organizations against the program, concerning that the program will be used for surveillance purposes. In 2019, researchers reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses facial recognition software against state driver's license databases, including for some states that provide licenses to undocumented immigrants. In December 2022, 16 major domestic airports in
3570-440: A subject's face in real-time and be able to face detect and recognize. A different form of taking input data for face recognition is by using thermal cameras , by this procedure the cameras will only detect the shape of the head and it will ignore the subject accessories such as glasses, hats, or makeup. Unlike conventional cameras, thermal cameras can capture facial imagery even in low-light and nighttime conditions without using
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#17327902181903740-579: A two-thirds majority in the NPC. The remaining seats are held by nominally independent delegates and eight minor political parties , which are non- oppositional and support the CCP. All government bodies and state-owned enterprises have internal CCP committees that lead the decision-making in these institutions. The NPC meets annually for about two weeks in March to review and approve major new policy directions, and in between those sessions, delegates its powers to
3910-648: Is a permanent dossier or archival system that records the "performance and attitudes" of citizens of mainland China. Together with the current system of household registration, the Hukou system , it has been an important mechanism of social control. The contents of the file include physical characteristics, employment records, photographs, appraisals by supervisors and peers, academic reports from primary school to university, professional credentials, criminal convictions or administrative penalties, club/society memberships, employment records and political history such as membership in
4080-595: Is a statistical approach that distills an image into values and compares the values with templates to eliminate variances. Some classify these algorithms into two broad categories: holistic and feature-based models. The former attempts to recognize the face in its entirety while the feature-based subdivide into components such as according to features and analyze each as well as its spatial location with respect to other features. Popular recognition algorithms include principal component analysis using eigenfaces , linear discriminant analysis , elastic bunch graph matching using
4250-571: Is assisted by several vice premiers , currently four, each of them overseeing a certain area of administration. The premier, vice premiers and the State Councilors collectively form the inner cabinet that regularly convenes for the State Council Executive Meeting. The State Council includes 26 constituent ministries, and officially oversees the provincial-level governments throughout China. Generally,
4420-530: Is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a unitary communist state , in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's congresses. This system is based on the principle of unified state power , in which the legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), is constitutionally enshrined as "the highest state organ of power." As China's political system has no separation of powers , there
4590-425: Is calculated as a weighted combination of a number of Eigenfaces. Because few Eigenfaces were used to encode human faces of a given population, Turk and Pentland's PCA face detection method greatly reduced the amount of data that had to be processed to detect a face. Pentland in 1994 defined Eigenface features, including eigen eyes, eigen mouths and eigen noses, to advance the use of PCA in facial recognition. In 1997,
4760-676: Is concerned it might make the Ukrainians appear inhuman: "Is it actually working? Or is it making [Russians] say: 'Look at these lawless, cruel Ukrainians, doing this to our boys'?" While humans can recognize faces without much effort, facial recognition is a challenging pattern recognition problem in computing . Facial recognition systems attempt to identify a human face, which is three-dimensional and changes in appearance with lighting and facial expression, based on its two-dimensional image. To accomplish this computational task, facial recognition systems perform four steps. First face detection
4930-486: Is integrated with others, such as big data and AI, to build a national surveillance and data sharing platform. The smart system is equipped with facial recognition technology to record jaywalkers and non-motor vehicles that break traffic rules. When shopping in the self-service markets of Alibaba and Jingdong, two top Chinese e-commerce companies, customers can use electronic payments through the facial recognition system, which links them with their bank cards. Moreover, Baidu,
5100-600: Is led by SenseTime and has been assigned to a working group comprising 27 Chinese companies. Also Chinese companies are working to shape the United Nations ' standards for facial recognition, and video surveillance of cities and vehicles, with ZTE, Dahua Technology, China Telecom and others proposing standards to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). China has highly advanced facial recognition technology. The technology
5270-411: Is mandatory for Internet access in China and as of December 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology required that all individuals wishing to purchase SIM cards in China submit to facial recognition scans in order to tie mobile phone numbers, text messaging and Internet browsing activity to real name identities. The Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China passed in 2017 by
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5440-479: Is more assertive than the NPC itself and has vetoed proposed laws. The CCP Politburo Standing Committee consists of the government's top leadership. Historically it has had five to nine members. As of 2024, it has seven members. Its officially mandated purpose is to conduct policy discussions and make decisions on major issues when the Politburo, a larger decision-making body, is not in session. According to
5610-446: Is only available to government agencies who may only use the technology to assist in the course of law enforcement investigations or in connection with national security. The software was donated to Ukraine by Clearview AI. Russia is thought to be using it to find anti-war activists. Clearview AI was originally designed for US law enforcement. Using it in war raises new ethical concerns. One London based surveillance expert, Stephen Hare,
5780-579: Is only one branch of government which is represented by the legislature. The CCP through the NPC enacts unified leadership, which requires that all state organs, from the Supreme People's Court to the President of China , are elected by, answerable to, and have no separate powers than those granted to them by the NPC. By law, all elections at all levels must adhere to the leadership of the CCP. The CCP controls appointments in all state bodies through
5950-549: Is said to be 97% accurate, compared to 85% for the FBI's Next Generation Identification system. TikTok 's algorithm has been regarded as especially effective, but many were left to wonder at the exact programming that caused the app to be so effective in guessing the user's desired content. In June 2020, TikTok released a statement regarding the "For You" page, and how they recommended videos to users, which did not include facial recognition. In February 2021, however, TikTok agreed to
6120-471: Is the backbone of the National ID card system used throughout China by banking, financial services, healthcare, education and various government agencies, the law enforcement apparatus, Internet service providers and social media platforms to verify the real ID information of users and customers who wish to use their services. Government of China The government of the People's Republic of China
6290-404: Is the general fiscal budget, which is a unitary budget that is allocated between central fiscal and local fiscal budgets. The central government sets targets for its fiscal revenue and expenditures, as well as local government fiscal revenue and expenditures. Facial-recognition technology A facial recognition system is a technology potentially capable of matching a human face from
6460-413: Is the highest force for political leadership. The party's institutions overlap with government institutions and the party has authority over government decisions at both the local and central levels. Senior government officials throughout the country are appointed by the CCP, and are mostly CCP members. All government departments, state-owned enterprises and public institutes include CCP committees, from
6630-468: Is the precursor or foundation of the social credit system in that data stored within dossiers are pulled into a broader pool of data and amalgamated together with data pulled from other sources in order to provide a more complete picture of an individual's movements, actions and life. All Chinese citizens are required to hold a national identity card from the age of 16. The resident ID card ( Chinese : 居民身份证 ; pinyin : Jūmín shēnfèn zhèng ) acts as
6800-613: Is under surveillance by Internet police . Any message sent through a WeChat group is monitored by the Chinese technology giant Tencent, the application's operator. All conversations are stored for six months. Even conversations deleted by WeChat users can be retrieved back by Tencent, especially when government authorities seek evidence of a suspect's illegal activities. Authorities have admitted that they can retrieve archived messages once sent on WeChat. Nevertheless, Tencent CEO Ma Huateng stated that his company will not use user chats for big data analysis or invade users' privacy. In 2017,
6970-431: Is used to segment the face from the image background. In the second step the segmented face image is aligned to account for face pose , image size and photographic properties, such as illumination and grayscale . The purpose of the alignment process is to enable the accurate localization of facial features in the third step, the facial feature extraction. Features such as eyes, nose and mouth are pinpointed and measured in
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7140-427: The 13th Five Year Plan released in 2016. Although it is questionable whether such targets outlined in the plan have been achieved, the 14th Five Year Plan continues with the project, instructing public security organs to: "closely guard against, and crack down on, the infiltration, sabotage, subversion and separatist activities by hostile forces" Digital RMB or digital Yuan is a centralized digital currency issued by
7310-559: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping 's administration . Mass surveillance has significantly expanded under the PRC Cybersecurity Law (2016) and with the help of local companies like Tencent , Dahua Technology , Hikvision , SenseTime , ByteDance , Megvii , Yitu Technology , Huawei and ZTE , among many others. As of 2019, it is estimated that 200 million monitoring CCTV cameras of
7480-519: The Chinese economic reform , China has been characterized by a high degree of political centralization but significant economic decentralization. The central government sets the strategic direction while local officials carry it out, including developing the details of policy. Academics Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth Perry write that policy-making in China is influenced by the Chinese Communist Revolution , resulting in
7650-442: The Chinese government encouraged the use of various mobile phone apps as part of a broader surveillance push. Local regulators launched mobile apps for national security purposes and to allow citizens to report violations. As of 2018, the most notable surveillance mechanisms were mass camera surveillance on the streets, Internet surveillance, and newly invented surveillance methods based on social credit and identity. As of 2018,
7820-513: The Communist Youth League and or party membership. If an individual is a party member, the file will also include membership assessments of political integrity and performance of duties. Death certificate and eulogy may also be placed in the file. In 2001, a human rights group claimed the state public security bureaus located throughout the country were in the process of digitizing hundreds of millions of dang'an. The dang'an system
7990-504: The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released a new regulation, which imposed restrictions on the production and distribution of online news. The regulation required all platforms, such as online blogs, forums, websites, and social media apps, to be managed by party-sanctioned editorial staff. These staff must obtain approval from the national or local government Internet and information offices and be trained by
8160-675: The Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square , Beijing . These annual meetings are usually timed to occur with the meetings of the CPPCC, providing an opportunity for the officers of state to review past policies and present future plans to the nation. The NPC generally has a reputation of approving the work of the State Council and not engaging in overmuch drafting of laws itself. However, it and its Standing Committee have occasionally asserted themselves. For example,
8330-520: The Metropolitan Police , were using live facial recognition at public events and in public spaces. In September 2019, South Wales Police use of facial recognition was ruled lawful. Live facial recognition has been trialled since 2016 in the streets of London and will be used on a regular basis from Metropolitan Police from beginning of 2020. In August 2020 the Court of Appeal ruled that
8500-539: The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security . The resident ID card acts as the primary form of identification for citizens within China and is required for almost all basic government services and administrative tasks in everyday life. In March 2022, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stated that the government was planning the rollout of digital national ID cards with national rollout scheduled for an unspecified date. Household registration or Hukou ( Chinese : 户口 ; pinyin : Hùkǒu ) has been in existence since
8670-685: The Ministry of Public Security and the National Citizen Identity Information Center (NCIIC). According to CCP-owned tabloid Global Times , the system is fast enough to scan the entire population of the People's Republic of China in under a second and allegedly has an accuracy rate of 99.8% In 2020, reporting by Human Rights Watch indicated that public security bureaus (PSB's) across the country began implementing "Police Cloud" systems in order to aggregate data from healthcare, social media activity and Internet browsing activity, reportedly to track and predict
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#17327902181908840-643: The People's Bank of China (PBOC) in order to facilitate transactions as a supplement of a physical national currency, however, the government does not plan on replacing cash or other mobile payment apps with digital renminbi. As of 2021, the project was still in the pilot stage rolling out across select Chinese cities. Businesses will continue to be obligated to accept cash, and may be fined for refusing to accept cash. The public records or Dang'an ( simplified Chinese : 档案 ; traditional Chinese : 檔案 ; pinyin : dàng'àn ) literally: "archived record /file"
9010-761: The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) mandates that providers of instant messaging services, telecommunications and Internet service providers companies as well as domain name registration providers verify the real ID of users prior to provision of service. Article 24: Network operators handling network access and domain name registration services for users, handling stationary or mobile phone network access, or providing users with information publication or instant messaging services, shall require users to provide real identity information when signing agreements with users or confirming
9180-441: The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) developed a technique that would allow them to match facial imagery obtained using a thermal camera with those in databases that were captured using a conventional camera. Known as a cross-spectrum synthesis method due to how it bridges facial recognition from two different imaging modalities, this method synthesize a single image by analyzing multiple facial regions and details. It consists of
9350-585: The Viola–Jones object detection framework for faces. Paul Viola and Michael Jones combined their face detection method with the Haar-like feature approach to object recognition in digital images to launch AdaBoost , the first real-time frontal-view face detector. By 2015, the Viola–Jones algorithm had been implemented using small low power detectors on handheld devices and embedded systems . Therefore,
9520-454: The death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Many other states are using or developing a similar system however some states have laws prohibiting its use. The FBI has also instituted its Next Generation Identification program to include face recognition, as well as more traditional biometrics like fingerprints and iris scans , which can pull from both criminal and civil databases. The federal Government Accountability Office criticized
9690-444: The "Skynet" system had been put to use in mainland China, four times as many as the surveillance cameras in the United States . State media in China claim that Skynet is the largest video surveillance system in the world, utilizing facial recognition technology and big data analysis . In 2019, Comparitech reported that 8 out of the 10 most monitored cities in the world are in China, with Chongqing , Shenzhen and Shanghai being
9860-403: The "Skynet" system have been put to use in mainland China , four times the number of surveillance cameras in the United States . By 2020, the number of surveillance cameras in mainland China was expected to reach 626 million. As of August 2023, the country had over 700 million surveillance cameras according to online data, one lens for every two citizens. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated
10030-478: The CCP's Politburo Standing Committee . China's judicial organs are political organs that perform prosecutorial and court functions. Because of their political nature, China does not have judicial independence . China's courts are supervised by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), which answers to the NPC. The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) is responsible for prosecutions and supervises procuracies at
10200-696: The CCP's constitution, the General Secretary of the Central Committee must also be a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. The membership of the PSC is strictly ranked in protocol sequence . Historically, the general secretary (or party chairman ) has been ranked first; the rankings of other leaders have varied over time. Since the 1990s, the general secretary (also the president), premier, chairman of
10370-535: The CCP, and effectively acts as the state arm of the CCDI. It replaced the former Ministry of Supervision . The Supreme People's Court is the judicial organ of the People's Republic of China and is subject to the control of the CCP's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission . Hong Kong and Macau , as special administrative regions, have separate judicial systems based on British common law traditions and Portuguese civil-law traditions, respectively. The judges of
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#173279021819010540-619: The Central People's Government, consists of, besides the Premier, a variable number of vice premiers , five state councilors (protocol equal of vice premiers but with narrower portfolios), the secretary-general , and 26 ministers and other cabinet-level department heads . It consists of ministries and agencies with specific portfolios. The State Council presents most initiatives to the NPCSC for consideration after previous endorsement by
10710-504: The Chinese Internet. Web administrators have been seeking sexual information online to remove it as soon as they find it or otherwise censor it. As of 2018, there have been sections in China's criminal law which explicitly forbid the production, dissemination, or sale of obscene material, for which people can be imprisoned. In the 1980s, there was a campaign against "spiritual pollution", referring to sex-related content. In 2018,
10880-436: The Chinese central government had also adopted facial recognition technology, surveillance drones , robot police, and big data collection targeting online social media platforms to monitor its citizens. In 2019, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said China's mass surveillance mechanisms and machinery of private communications was "utterly mind-boggling". As of 2019, it was estimated that 200 million monitoring CCTV cameras of
11050-477: The Chinese government created a mass surveillance system called Skynet. The government revealed Skynet's existence in 2013, by which time the network included over 20 million cameras. In addition to monitoring the general public, cameras were installed outside mosques in the Xinjiang region, temples in Tibet, and the homes of dissidents. Feminists and LGBT rights groups are subject to increased scrutiny. In 2017,
11220-457: The Chinese government for using artificial intelligence facial recognition technology in its suppression against Uyghurs, Christians and Falun Gong practitioners. Even though facial recognition technology (FRT) is not fully accurate, it is being increasingly deployed for identification purposes by the police in India. FRT systems generate a probability match score, or a confidence score between
11390-472: The Chinese government had collected tens of thousands of voice samples, for use with iFlytek technology that identifies individuals by voice on phone calls or in public places. In 2007, the state-run China Internet Information Center reported that the world's largest ID database hosting over 1.3 billion entries was complete. NCIIC or the National Citizen Identity Information Center is located in Beijing and
11560-408: The Chinese government required all users of Sina Weibo , a microblogging site, to register with their real names and identity numbers by September 15 of that year. Weibo users who refused to register their accounts with real names were not able to post, repost, or comment on the site. At the beginning of 2018, Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, claimed that WeChat's monthly active users across
11730-749: The Chinese government required telecommunications carriers including China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom to block individual access to VPNs by February 1. In August 2017, more than 60 VPNs, such as Astrill and Express VPN, were removed from China's App Store. VPNs that are allowed to be used in China must be approved by state regulators and use the state network infrastructure. Instead of sensitive words which can be censored online, Chinese netizens use puns and Chinese homophones to communicate. The Chinese government has been denouncing sex and pornography culture and actively establishes "sex education" for teenagers and high school students in order to prevent them from developing an interest in this culture. As of 2012,
11900-404: The Chinese government was believed to be developing a social credit system that gives their citizens a numerical score by analyzing their social behaviors and collecting fiscal and government data, and accordingly punishing and rewarding them with that score. However, new reports state that such information is false, with the social credit system being low-tech, with no unified score for citizens and
12070-580: The FBI for not addressing various concerns related to privacy and accuracy. Starting in 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection deployed "biometric face scanners" at U.S. airports. Passengers taking outbound international flights can complete the check-in, security and the boarding process after getting facial images captured and verified by matching their ID photos stored on CBP's database. Images captured for travelers with U.S. citizenship will be deleted within up to 12-hours. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had expressed its intention to adopt
12240-783: The Fisherface algorithm, the hidden Markov model , the multilinear subspace learning using tensor representation, and the neuronal motivated dynamic link matching . Modern facial recognition systems make increasing use of machine learning techniques such as deep learning . To enable human identification at a distance (HID) low-resolution images of faces are enhanced using face hallucination . In CCTV imagery faces are often very small. But because facial recognition algorithms that identify and plot facial features require high resolution images, resolution enhancement techniques have been developed to enable facial recognition systems to work with imagery that has been captured in environments with
12410-532: The General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the top leader in the one-party system. The office is officially regarded as an institution of the state rather than an administrative post; theoretically, the president serves at the pleasure of the National People's Congress, the legislature, and is not legally vested to take executive action on its own prerogative. The current president is Xi Jinping, who took office in March 2013. The office
12580-489: The Internet (browsing histories) and the logistical purchase and transaction records of major e-commerce companies from third party brokers in order to more effectively predict crime while cracking down and targeting any potential dissent. Sharp Eyes ( Chinese : 锐眼工程 ; pinyin : Ruì yǎn gōngchéng ) is a project which aims to surveil a hundred percent of public space using surveillance in China by 2020, according to
12750-764: The NPC Standing Committee , the chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference , the secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection , the party's top anti-graft body, and the first-ranked secretary of the CCP secretariat have consistently also been members of the Politburo Standing Committee. Ranked below the party's Politburo Standing Committee are deputy state leaders including
12920-528: The NPC, the vice president has no power other than what the president bestowed on them but assists the president. The head of the State Council , the NPC's executive organ, is the premier . The CCP general secretary is China's leading official since the CCP is tasked with formulating and setting national policy which the state, after being adopted by the NPC or relevant state organ, is responsible for implementing. The State Council, also referred to as
13090-630: The National Basic Population Information Database (NBPIB) as part of the Golden Shield Project , which contains digitized Hukou information in addition to information on past travels and criminal history. The database contains information on 96% of the Chinese population. Household registration is governed by the "Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Household Registration" issued in 1958, which states: Article 2: All citizens of
13260-563: The PCA Eigenface method of face recognition was improved upon using linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to produce Fisherfaces . LDA Fisherfaces became dominantly used in PCA feature based face recognition. While Eigenfaces were also used for face reconstruction. In these approaches no global structure of the face is calculated which links the facial features or parts. Purely feature based approaches to facial recognition were overtaken in
13430-716: The Pension Disbursing Authorities from the comfort of their homes using smart phones". Mr. Jade Jeremiah Lyngdoh, a law student, sent a legal notice to the relevant authorities highlighting that "The application has been rolled out without any anchoring legislation which governs the processing of personal data and thus, lacks lawfulness and the Government is not empowered to process data." The Australian Border Force and New Zealand Customs Service have set up an automated border processing system called SmartGate that uses face recognition, which compares
13600-407: The People's Republic of China is put in practice through its comprehensive control of the state, military, and media. The National People's Congress (NPC) is the national legislature of China. With 2,977 members in 2023, it is the largest parliamentary body in the world. Under China's current Constitution, the NPC is structured as a unicameral legislature , with the power to legislate, to oversee
13770-480: The People's Republic of China shall perform household registration. Article 3 The household registration work shall be in charge of the public security organs at all levels. Cities and towns with public security police stations shall be under the jurisdiction of public security police stations; townships and towns without public security stations shall be under the jurisdiction of townships and towns. The township and township people's committees and police stations are
13940-604: The Presidency was gone. The 3rd promulgation in 1978 expanded the number of articles, but was still under the influence of the very-recent Cultural Revolution . The current constitution is the PRC's fourth promulgation, declared on 4 December 1982, and has served as a stable constitution for 30 years. The legal power of the CCP is guaranteed by the PRC Constitution and its position as the supreme political authority in
14110-401: The State Council and the CCP were unable to secure passage of a fuel tax in 2009 to finance the construction of expressways . Likewise, the Ministry of Finance has sought to institute property taxes since the early 2010s, but opposition from the NPC (as well as local governments) have prevented any property tax proposals from reaching the NPC's legislative agenda. The NPC Standing Committee
14280-713: The Supreme Court of India's decision in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India (22017 10 SCC 1), any justifiable intrusion by the State into people's right to privacy, which is protected as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution, must confirm to certain thresholds, namely: legality, necessity, proportionality and procedural safeguards. As per the Internet Freedom Foundation,
14450-497: The Supreme People's Court are appointed by the National People's Congress. The governors of China's provinces and autonomous regions and mayors of its directly administered municipalities are appointed by the State Council after receiving the nominal consent of the National People's Congress (NPC). The Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions (SARS) have significant local autonomy including separate governments, legal systems, and basic constitutional laws, but must follow
14620-460: The US started testing facial-recognition tech where kiosks with cameras are checking the photos on travelers' IDs to make sure that passengers are not impostors. In 2006, the "Skynet" (天網）)Project was initiated by the Chinese government to implement CCTV surveillance nationwide and as of 2018, there have been 20 million cameras, many of which are capable of real-time facial recognition, deployed across
14790-633: The Ukrainian army using the software is subsequently contacting the families of the deceased soldiers to raise awareness of Russian activities in Ukraine. The main goal is to destabilise the Russian government. It can be seen as a form of psychological warfare . About 340 Ukrainian government officials in five government ministries are using the technology. It is used to catch spies that might try to enter Ukraine. Clearview AI's facial recognition database
14960-641: The United Kingdom have been trialing live facial recognition technology at public events since 2015. In May 2017, a man was arrested using an automatic facial recognition (AFR) system mounted on a van operated by the South Wales Police. Ars Technica reported that "this appears to be the first time [AFR] has led to an arrest". However, a 2018 report by Big Brother Watch found that these systems were up to 98% inaccurate. The report also revealed that two UK police forces, South Wales Police and
15130-505: The Viola–Jones algorithm has not only broadened the practical application of face recognition systems but has also been used to support new features in user interfaces and teleconferencing . Ukraine is using the US-based Clearview AI facial recognition software to identify dead Russian soldiers. Ukraine has conducted 8,600 searches and identified the families of 582 deceased Russian soldiers. The IT volunteer section of
15300-456: The ability to exercise social control and regulation, (3) coercive resources, (4) the capacity to consult and collaborate with emerging social groups and organizations to balance conflicting interests, and (5) the ability to learn from failures and mistakes. China's fiscal budget has four parts: general fiscal budget, budget for government funds, budget for operating income of state-owned capital, and social insurance budget. The largest part
15470-869: The activities of activists, dissidents, and ethnic minorities, including those alleged to be in possession of "extreme thoughts". The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission plans to construct a network of police clouds in every provincial and municipal public security bureau, eventually interlinking them together in one unified national police cloud system. The police cloud system aims to integrate information from all available sources to public security bureaus, including but not limited to residential addresses, family relations, birth control information, religious affiliations, hotel, flight records, train records, biometrics, CCTV footage, mail delivery information and information shared across from other government departments. Reporting by Human Rights Watch also revealed PSB's also intended to purchase data such as navigation data on
15640-625: The authority of government departments is defined by regulations and rules rather than law. The State Council issues regulations on the forms of official government and CCP documentation which govern the level of authority, urgency, and confidentiality required by the document. Official documents include ones which must be strictly implemented by lower levels of government (such as "Decisions" and "Orders"), ones which can be treated more flexibly (such as "Opinions" and "Notices"), and ones with less or more general content (such as "Letters" and "Minutes"). The Central Military Commission (CMC) exercises
15810-559: The ban of facial recognition systems in several cities in the United States . Growing societal concerns led social networking company Meta Platforms to shut down its Facebook facial recognition system in 2021, deleting the face scan data of more than one billion users. The change represented one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history. IBM also stopped offering facial recognition technology due to similar concerns. Automated facial recognition
15980-591: The base of the government and party hierarchies. Power is concentrated in the "paramount leader," an informal title currently occupied by Xi Jinping, who heads the four most important political and state offices: He is the general secretary of the CCP Central Committee , Chairman of the Central Military Commission , and President of the PRC. Near the end of Hu Jintao's term in office, experts observed growing limitations to
16150-405: The central and state security agencies. The Internet Freedom Foundation has flagged concerns regarding the project. The NGO has highlighted that the accuracy of FRT systems are "routinely exaggerated and the real numbers leave much to be desired. The implementation of such faulty FRT systems would lead to high rates of false positives and false negatives in this recognition process." Under
16320-497: The central government allowed local governments to issue bonds to finance public capital spending for projects like infrastructure and hospitals. The quantity of such bonds is set by the central government. Local governments cannot issue bonds to pay for current spending, such as salaries. China's civil service is divided into tiers. The highest tiers (including department chiefs, deputy department chiefs, and section chiefs) have significant involvement in policy-making. After
16490-479: The central government in foreign policy and national security , and their chief executives are effectively picked by the CCP Politburo. Below the provincial level, there are prefectures and counties. Counties are divided into townships and villages . While most are run by appointed officials, some lower-level jurisdictions have direct elections. While operating under strict control and supervision by
16660-429: The central government, China's local governments manage relatively high share of fiscal revenues and expenditures. Their level of authority and autonomy in economic decision-making is high, and they have played a major role in national economic development. They do not have the right to make tax laws but may have the ability to adjust certain tax rates within boundaries established by the central government. Through
16830-467: The central government. As required by the Chinese government, major Internet platforms and messaging services in China established elaborate self-censorship mechanisms. Some have hired teams of thousands to police content and invested in powerful artificial intelligence algorithms. In 2019, on the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre , China's AI censors cranked up. Launched in 2011, WeChat, China's most popular messaging app,
17000-469: The contour of the eye sockets, nose, and chin. One advantage of 3D face recognition is that it is not affected by changes in lighting like other techniques. It can also identify a face from a range of viewing angles, including a profile view. Three-dimensional data points from a face vastly improve the precision of face recognition. 3D-dimensional face recognition research is enabled by the development of sophisticated sensors that project structured light onto
17170-621: The cost of providing public goods has devolved to local governments from the central government and therefore local governments need to generate fees to provide public services. Local governments are the key provider of public of goods in China. Since 2014, the National New-Type Urbanization Plan has resulted in the consolidation of planning processes that were formerly distributed across different bureaucracies, such as urban and rural land use, tourism planning, and environmental planning. Beginning in 2015,
17340-563: The country for this project. Some official claim that the current Skynet system can scan the entire Chinese population in one second and the world population in two seconds. In 2017, the Qingdao police was able to identify twenty-five wanted suspects using facial recognition equipment at the Qingdao International Beer Festival, one of which had been on the run for 10 years. The equipment works by recording
17510-580: The dark. This is done by using a "Flood Illuminator", which is a dedicated infrared flash that throws out invisible infrared light onto the user's face to properly read the 30,000 facial points. Facial recognition algorithms can help in diagnosing some diseases using specific features on the nose, cheeks and other part of the human face . Relying on developed data sets, machine learning has been used to identify genetic abnormalities just based on facial dimensions. FRT has also been used to verify patients before surgery procedures. In March, 2022 according to
17680-412: The direction of local policy experiments or pilot programs. The typical approach is that central government leadership begins drafting formal policies, law, or regulations after policy has been developed at local levels. China has a high degree of state capacity . Academic Thomas Heberer attributes China's state capacity to: (1) the legitimacy of its political system as viewed by its citizens, (2)
17850-411: The disguise, face hallucination algorithms need to correctly map the entire state of the face, which may be not possible due to the momentary facial expression captured in the low resolution image. Three-dimensional face recognition technique uses 3D sensors to capture information about the shape of a face. This information is then used to identify distinctive features on the surface of a face, such as
18020-433: The distances, and return the closed records as a possible match. In 1970, Takeo Kanade publicly demonstrated a face-matching system that located anatomical features such as the chin and calculated the distance ratio between facial features without human intervention. Later tests revealed that the system could not always reliably identify facial features. Nonetheless, interest in the subject grew and in 1977 Kanade published
18190-466: The early 1990s with the principal component analysis (PCA). The PCA method of face detection is also known as Eigenface and was developed by Matthew Turk and Alex Pentland. Turk and Pentland combined the conceptual approach of the Karhunen–Loève theorem and factor analysis , to develop a linear model . Eigenfaces are determined based on global and orthogonal features in human faces. A human face
18360-407: The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and since imperial times. The "Hukou" or family registration system lists the members of an individual's immediate family and any extended relatives who may be connected to the individual in addition to births, deaths, marriages, divorces and relocations and other movements. Hukou is divided into either agricultural or urban status and acts as
18530-495: The face of the traveller with the data in the e-passport microchip. All Canadian international airports use facial recognition as part of the Primary Inspection Kiosk program that compares a traveler face to their photo stored on the ePassport . This program first came to Vancouver International Airport in early 2017 and was rolled up to all remaining international airports in 2018–2019. Police forces in
18700-440: The face. 3D matching technique are sensitive to expressions, therefore researchers at Technion applied tools from metric geometry to treat expressions as isometries . A new method of capturing 3D images of faces uses three tracking cameras that point at different angles; one camera will be pointing at the front of the subject, second one to the side, and third one at an angle. All these cameras will work together so it can track
18870-402: The facial recognition system FaceIT by Visionics into a mug shot booking system that allowed police, judges and court officers to track criminals across the state. Until the 1990s, facial recognition systems were developed primarily by using photographic portraits of human faces. Research on face recognition to reliably locate a face in an image that contains other objects gained traction in
19040-632: The facial recognition systems on the market to search photographs for new driving licenses against the existing DMV database. DMV offices became one of the first major markets for automated facial recognition technology and introduced US citizens to facial recognition as a standard method of identification. The increase of the US prison population in the 1990s prompted U.S. states to established connected and automated identification systems that incorporated digital biometric databases, in some instances this included facial recognition. In 1999, Minnesota incorporated
19210-452: The fact village and local party cadres lack the ability or necessary legal knowledge to enforce laws. Since all citizens of China are required to carry a national ID card , the resident ID card is the only acceptable form of government-issued identification for a variety of services including the purchase of SIM cards, plane tickets, high-speed train tickets, banking, financial services, education and healthcare. Further, real name registration
19380-448: The first DMV offices to use automated facial recognition systems to prevent people from obtaining multiple driving licenses using different names. Driver's licenses in the United States were at that point a commonly accepted form of photo identification . DMV offices across the United States were undergoing a technological upgrade and were in the process of establishing databases of digital ID photographs. This enabled DMV offices to deploy
19550-581: The first detailed book on facial recognition technology. In 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) established the face recognition technology program FERET to develop "automatic face recognition capabilities" that could be employed in a productive real life environment "to assist security, intelligence, and law enforcement personnel in
19720-576: The globe reached a billion for the first time. Since Tencent cooperates with the central government to implement self-censorship and mass surveillance, it enjoys the dominance of its industry in China. Other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Messenger, and Line are mostly blocked or even forced out of the Chinese market. Chinese Internet users have several ways to circumvent censorship. Netizens generally rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) to access blocked websites and messaging apps. However, in July 2017,
19890-449: The government mainly focusing on fraudulent and unethical businesses that renege on debt repayments and financial agreements or fail to honor legal contracts. Smart cities began rolling out in 2003 and China is host to hundreds of smart city pilot programs aiming to measure, track and analyse data from every aspect of city life including air quality, traffic flow, congestion and waste water disposal. A key component of smart cities includes
20060-496: The household registration authorities. In accordance with the Entry and Exit Administration Law of the People's Republic of China, all persons entering the country or upon moving to each new region within China must register their residency by obtaining a temporary residence permit at the nearest Public Security Bureau or PSB within 24 hours of arrival. Failure to do so may result in fines of up to 2,000 RMB or detention. Hotels hosting
20230-459: The identities of its Year Card holders. An estimated 300 tourist sites in China have installed facial recognition systems and use them to admit visitors. This case is reported to be the first on the use of facial recognition systems in China. In August 2020, Radio Free Asia reported that in 2019 Geng Guanjun, a citizen of Taiyuan City who had used the WeChat app by Tencent to forward a video to
20400-574: The identity of people seeking vaccines. Ten human rights and digital rights organizations and more than 150 individuals signed a statement by the Internet Freedom Foundation that raised alarm against the deployment of facial recognition technology in the central government's vaccination drive process. Implementation of an error-prone system without adequate legislation containing mandatory safeguards, would deprive citizens of essential services and linking this untested technology to
20570-516: The image to represent the face. The so established feature vector of the face is then, in the fourth step, matched against a database of faces. Some face recognition algorithms identify facial features by extracting landmarks, or features, from an image of the subject's face. For example, an algorithm may analyze the relative position, size, and/or shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. These features are then used to search for other images with matching features. Other algorithms normalize
20740-456: The implementation of mass surveillance as it has provided a plausible pretext to do so. Mass surveillance in China emerged in the Maoist era after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Mao invented this mechanism of control that encompassed the entire nation and its people in order to strengthen his power in the newly founded government. In the early years, when technology
20910-406: The inherent limitations of super-resolution algorithms. Face hallucination techniques are also used to pre-treat imagery where faces are disguised. Here the disguise, such as sunglasses, is removed and the face hallucination algorithm is applied to the image. Such face hallucination algorithms need to be trained on similar face images with and without disguise. To fill in the area uncovered by removing
21080-574: The installation of public security cameras in order to more effectively deter crime and anti-social behaviour, however, critics have stated the projects are also used as a form of social control in order to target dissidents and crack down on any potential unrest. Skynet is an interlinked system of facial recognition software enabled surveillance cameras currently in operation in 16 Chinese provinces used to help public security organs crack down on crime and identify citizens in public through cross reference with criminal and national identity databases held by
21250-434: The late 1980s and the early 1990s, the municipal government regulatory mechanisms expanded, as did their capacity to regulate peri-urban areas. The 1994 fiscal reforms resulted in the need of local governments to generate non-tax revenue, which they did in the form of revenues through land development and use fees. This resulted in their increase in both administrative size and geographic size. From 2002 to at least 2023,
21420-576: The late 1990s by the Bochum system, which used Gabor filter to record the face features and computed a grid of the face structure to link the features. Christoph von der Malsburg and his research team at the University of Bochum developed Elastic Bunch Graph Matching in the mid-1990s to extract a face out of an image using skin segmentation. By 1997, the face detection method developed by Malsburg outperformed most other facial detection systems on
21590-561: The loan application Megvii stated that it needed to improve the accuracy of identifying masked individuals. Many public places in China are implemented with facial recognition equipment, including railway stations, airports, tourist attractions, expos, and office buildings. In October 2019, a professor at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University sued the Hangzhou Safari Park for abusing private biometric information of customers. The safari park uses facial recognition technology to verify
21760-419: The look of users. Image augmenting applications already on the market, such as Facetune and Perfect365, were limited to static images, whereas Looksery allowed augmented reality to live videos. In late 2015 SnapChat purchased Looksery, which would then become its landmark lenses function. Snapchat filter applications use face detection technology and on the basis of the facial features identified in an image
21930-517: The main deliberative bodies of China, and are often referred to as the Two Sessions . Aside from the CCP, eight minor political parties participate, but are non- oppositional and have no real power. They must accept the primacy of the CCP to exist and their members are preapproved by the CCP's United Front Work Department . The NPC, elected for a term of five years, holds annual sessions every spring, usually lasting from 10 to 14 days, in
22100-458: The market. The so-called "Bochum system" of face detection was sold commercially on the market as ZN-Face to operators of airports and other busy locations. The software was "robust enough to make identifications from less-than-perfect face views. It can also often see through such impediments to identification as mustaches, beards, changed hairstyles and glasses—even sunglasses". Real-time face detection in video footage became possible in 2001 with
22270-636: The measurement of a human's physiological characteristics, facial recognition systems are categorized as biometrics . Although the accuracy of facial recognition systems as a biometric technology is lower than iris recognition , fingerprint image acquisition , palm recognition or voice recognition , it is widely adopted due to its contactless process. Facial recognition systems have been deployed in advanced human–computer interaction , video surveillance , law enforcement , passenger screening, decisions on employment and housing and automatic indexing of images. Facial recognition systems are employed throughout
22440-597: The most frequent way Chinese people were accessing otherwise banned sexual material was through the Internet. According to a 2012 article, the number of sex-related pages was increasing at the time. As of 2010, China's Ministry of Public Security had collected intelligence agents from student groups to spy on people's Internet activities. When government efforts at porn censorship and surveillance heightened in 2010, instances of erotic activism also emerged online. As of 2012, movies, books, comics, and videos involving sexually sensitive or provocative material were typically banned on
22610-483: The multi-region cross-spectrum synthesis model demonstrated a performance improvement of about 30% over baseline methods and about 5% over state-of-the-art methods. Founded in 2013, Looksery went on to raise money for its face modification app on Kickstarter. After successful crowdfunding, Looksery launched in October 2014. The application allows video chat with others through a special filter for faces that modifies
22780-475: The number to two million by 2015 at a predicted cost of 12.3 billion yuan . By 2020, the Chinese government expects to integrate private and public cameras, leveraging the country's technological expertise in facial recognition technology to build a nationwide surveillance network. The facial recognition technology has technological and systematic limitations. For example, a supervisor at an AI firm that provides research support for this technology has stated that
22950-520: The operations of the government, and to elect the major officials of state. Its delegates are elected for a five-year term through a multi-tiered electoral system . According to the Constitution, the NPC is the highest state institution within China's political system. The NPC and the National Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a consultative body whose members represent various people's organizations , are
23120-469: The paramount leader's de facto control over the government, but at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping's term limits were removed and his powers were expanded. Under the PRC's constitution, the President of the People's Republic of China is a largely ceremonial office with limited powers. However, since 1993, as a matter of convention, the presidency has been held simultaneously by
23290-577: The party and state systems. The commission is headed by the CMC Chairman. The National Supervisory Commission (NSC) is the highest state supervisory ( anti-corruption ) agency of China. At the same administrative ranking as the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate , it supervises all public officials who exercise public power. It closely operates together with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of
23460-446: The party's chief staff, vice premiers, and the party secretaries of China's most important municipalities and provinces. Ministers and provincial governors are next in rank, followed by deputy ministers and deputy provincial governors. Ministry director generals and sub provincial municipality mayors rank below this, followed by ministry deputy director generals and third-tier city mayors. There are five ranks below these which reach to
23630-461: The pattern. The pattern is sent to a local "Secure Enclave" in the device's central processing unit (CPU) to confirm a match with the phone owner's face. The facial pattern is not accessible by Apple. The system will not work with eyes closed, in an effort to prevent unauthorized access. The technology learns from changes in a user's appearance, and therefore works with hats, scarves, glasses, and many sunglasses, beard and makeup. It also works in
23800-512: The performance of their duties." Face recognition systems that had been trialled in research labs were evaluated. The FERET tests found that while the performance of existing automated facial recognition systems varied, a handful of existing methods could viably be used to recognize faces in still images taken in a controlled environment. The FERET tests spawned three US companies that sold automated facial recognition systems. Vision Corporation and Miros Inc were founded in 1994, by researchers who used
23970-477: The product line with its " Face ID " platform, which uses an infrared illumination system. Apple introduced Face ID on the flagship iPhone X as a biometric authentication successor to the Touch ID , a fingerprint based system. Face ID has a facial recognition sensor that consists of two parts: a "Romeo" module that projects more than 30,000 infrared dots onto the user's face, and a "Juliet" module that reads
24140-542: The provincial, prefecture, and county levels. At the same administrative ranking as the SPC and SPP, the National Supervisory Commission (NSC) was established in 2018 to investigate corruption within the CCP and state organs. All courts and their personnel are subject to the effective control of the CCP's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission . The CCP constitution states that the party
24310-592: The provision of services. Where users do not provide real identity information, network operators must not provide them with relevant services. As a result of the passage of the cybersecurity law, network operators (widely believed to refer to Internet service providers) are required to maintain unspecified "network logs" for at least 6 months. Although the exact definition of what constitutes network logs remains unclear, it has been interpreted by Jones Day and other international law firms to refer to weblogs or Internet browsing history. In 2017, Human Rights Watch reported
24480-421: The pupil centers, the inside and outside corners of eyes, and the widows peak in the hairline. The coordinates were used to calculate 20 individual distances, including the width of the mouth and of the eyes. A human could process about 40 pictures an hour, building a database of these computed distances. A computer would then automatically compare the distances for each photograph, calculate the difference between
24650-594: The region found surveillance cameras installed every hundred meters or so in several cities, as well as facial recognition checkpoints at areas like gas stations, shopping centers, and mosque entrances. In May 2019, Human Rights Watch reported finding Face++ code in the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), a police surveillance app used to collect data on, and track the Uighur community in Xinjiang . Human Rights Watch released
24820-622: The relationship between the government and the CCP, James Palmer, writing for Foreign Policy , states that, "[t]he Chinese government is essentially the shadow of the Communist Party, moving as the party does, and consequently government roles matter far less than party ones." According to The Economist , "[e]specially when meeting foreigners, officials may present name cards bearing government titles but stay quiet about party positions which may or may not outrank their state jobs." According to scholar Rush Doshi , "[t]he Party sits above
24990-573: The results of the FERET tests as a selling point. Viisage Technology was established by a identification card defense contractor in 1996 to commercially exploit the rights to the facial recognition algorithm developed by Alex Pentland at MIT . Following the 1993 FERET face-recognition vendor test, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in West Virginia and New Mexico became
25160-496: The results. New policies are often tested locally before being applied more widely, resulting in a policy process that involves experimentation and feedback. This method of first implementing policy through local pilot testing was also used during the Mao era. Generally, high level central government leadership refrains from drafting specific policies, instead using the informal networks and site visits to affirm or suggest changes to
25330-457: The same time, approximately 40 million surveillance cameras were active in the United States in 2014, which amounts to approximately one camera per eight citizens; however, these are largely installed by homeowners and stores rather than the government. According to official statistics in 2012, more than 660 of the mainland's 676 cities use surveillance systems. In Guangdong province , 1.1 million cameras were installed in 2012, with plans to increase
25500-410: The separation of the state and the party, especially advocated by more liberal officials such as Zhao Ziyang . The proposals included abolishing CCP committees from some government departments, increasing the influence of the State Council, and having professional managers leader SOEs instead of CCP committees. These proposals were abandoned after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre . On
25670-442: The state, runs parallel to the state, and is enmeshed in every level of the state." The integration of the CCP and the state has accelerated under Xi Jinping, chairing eight party commissions that direct government bodies. Under Xi, several government and party bodies have also merged, with one party organization having an external state government name under the one institution with two names system, further integrating party and
25840-466: The state. The Constitution of the PRC was first created on 20 September 1954, before which an interim constitution -like document created by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was in force. The second promulgation in 1975 shortened the constitution to just about 30 articles, containing CCP slogans and revolutionary language throughout. The role of courts was slashed, and
26010-816: The stay of foreigners or non-PRC nationals are obligated to report and upload information to platforms stipulated by the PSB's in each respective area. The regulation is reminiscent of former Soviet practice in that it is designed to closely surveil all foreign nationals in the event they may be potential spies who pose a risk to national security in addition to being able to quickly respond or detain anyone who may be in violation of laws or disrupt public order. On July 11, 2020, state media outlet Xinhua announced that local party committees and officials including neighborhood management committees would be empowered to engage in law enforcement activities and hand out administrative punishments of residents within their perimeters. According to
26180-562: The supreme command and control over the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the People's Armed Police, and the Militia. It operates within the CCP under the name "Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China", and as the military arm of the central government under the name "Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China". Under the arrangement of " one institution with two names ", both commissions have identical personnel, organization and function, and operate under both
26350-577: The suspect who is to be identified and the database of identified criminals that is available with the police. The National Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS) is already being developed by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a body constituted under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The project seeks to develop and deploy a national database of photographs which would comport with a facial recognition technology system by
26520-483: The system are deleted immediately. The U.S. Department of State operates one of the largest face recognition systems in the world with a database of 117 million American adults, with photos typically drawn from driver's license photos. Although it is still far from completion, it is being put to use in certain cities to give clues as to who was in the photo. The FBI uses the photos as an investigative tool, not for positive identification. As of 2016, facial recognition
26690-650: The system of activity profile can only look for a maximum of a thousand people in one search. Additionally, the system cannot work continuously for long periods of time, requiring reactivation in cases of extreme need. The National Information Security Standardization Technical Committee (全国信标委生物特征识别分技术委), which is subordinate to the China Communications Standards Association , started a project in November 2019 to create mandatory standards for facial recognition in China. The project
26860-407: The task of a "grid monitor" for a neighborhood committee is to: "fully understand the residents of their grid, including exactly who lives where, which organizations they belong to, and the sort of lives they lead". The devolvement of law enforcement powers down to the county and village levels has been described as "unprecedented" with the potential to lead to "major turmoil" and social unrest due to
27030-442: The title was " Chairman "; after 1982, this translation was changed to " President ", although the Chinese title remains unchanged. In March 2018, presidential term limits were abolished. The State Council is the chief administrative authority and national cabinet of China. It is appointed by the National People's Congress and is chaired by the premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency. The premier
27200-513: The vaccination roll-out in India will only exclude persons from the vaccine delivery system. In July, 2021, a press release by the Government of Meghalaya stated that facial recognition technology (FRT) would be used to verify the identity of pensioners to issue a Digital Life Certificate using "Pensioner's Life Certification Verification" mobile application. The notice, according to the press release, purports to offer pensioners "a secure, easy and hassle-free interface for verifying their liveness to
27370-399: The village level to the national level. The CCP committees in government bodies supervise and lead the bodies, with the State Council legally required to implement CCP policies. As outlined by the CCP constitution: "Government, the military, society and schools, north, south, east and west – the party leads them all." Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping , there were proposals to increase
27540-492: The way the facial recognition system had been used by the South Wales Police in 2017 and 2018 violated human rights. However, by 2024 the Metropolitan Police were using the technique with a database of 16,000 suspects, leading to over 360 arrests, including rapists and someone wanted for grievous bodily harm for 8 years. They claim a false positive rate of only 1 in 6,000. The photos of those not identified by
27710-474: The working legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC). This organ adopts most national legislation, interprets the constitution and laws, and conducts constitutional reviews , and is headed by the chairman , one of China's top officials. The president represents China abroad, though since the 1990s, the presidency has always been held by the CCP general secretary . Elected separately by
27880-510: The world and 540 million in China. The government says this prevents crime, but citizens worry that their data and privacy could be compromised. In late October 2020, Deng Yufeng, an artist, used performance art to highlight how difficult it is to dodge the view of security cameras. The Chinese government has been strengthening its tight control over the Internet and digital communication. There are more than 750 million Internet users in China, and their online actions are strictly regulated. In 2017,
28050-551: The world today by governments and private companies. Their effectiveness varies, and some systems have previously been scrapped because of their ineffectiveness. The use of facial recognition systems has also raised controversy, with claims that the systems violate citizens' privacy, commonly make incorrect identifications, encourage gender norms and racial profiling , and do not protect important biometric data. The appearance of synthetic media such as deepfakes has also raised concerns about its security. These claims have led to
28220-429: The world's top 3. In 2019, China supplied surveillance technology to most of the world, and positioned the country in control over the mass surveillance industry . According to industry researcher IHS Markit , at the end of 2019, there were 770 million surveillance cameras in the world, with approximately 415.8 million of them located in China. If these trends continue, by the end of 2021 there will be about 1 billion in
28390-523: Was being used to identify people in photos taken by police in San Diego and Los Angeles (not on real-time video, and only against booking photos) and use was planned in West Virginia and Dallas . In recent years Maryland has used face recognition by comparing people's faces to their driver's license photos. The system drew controversy when it was used in Baltimore to arrest unruly protesters after
28560-485: Was first established in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China in 1954 and successively held by Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi . Liu fell into political disgrace during the Cultural Revolution, after which the office became vacant. The office was abolished under the Constitution of 1975, then reinstated in the Constitution of 1982, but with reduced powers. The official English-language translation of
28730-454: Was pioneered in the 1960s by Woody Bledsoe , Helen Chan Wolf , and Charles Bisson, whose work focused on teaching computers to recognize human faces. Their early facial recognition project was dubbed "man-machine" because a human first needed to establish the coordinates of facial features in a photograph before they could be used by a computer for recognition. Using a graphics tablet , a human would pinpoint facial features coordinates, such as
28900-434: Was relatively undeveloped in China, mass surveillance was accomplished through disseminating information by word of mouth. Chinese people kept a watchful eye on one another and reported inappropriate behaviors that infringed upon the dominant social ideals of the time. According to a 1987 publication, computer and Internet technology spread to China in the late 20th century as a result of the Chinese economic reform . In 2005,
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