In January of 2018 I noted reports of China implementing a facial recognition system as a surveillance system in support of social credit. Now, it’s changing a bit:
Now, China is putting its freewheeling facial recognition industry on notice. Citing Guo’s case, China’s top court announced this week that consumers’ privacy must be protected from unwarranted face tracking.
“The public is increasingly worried about the abuse of facial recognition technology,” Yang Wanming, vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, said in a news conference on Wednesday. “The calls for strengthening protection of facial information are increasing.” [WaPo]
The trick here is to realize this is a change to the how, not the what:
Marshall Meyer, an emeritus professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in China policy, said the new restrictions don’t mean China’s residents will no longer be surveilled, only that the use of the technology will be more centralized.
“It is the government, and only the government, that has the right to collect and collate unlimited facial recognition data,” he said. “For consumers, then, there is a little more privacy. But not a lot more.”
Xi has shifted to a “politics in command” approach that accepts some hits to economic growth in exchange for a stronger grip on tech companies, Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative, wrote in a report published Thursday.
As often happens, there are pluses and minuses that were not, perhaps, considered by the planners grasping after the apple, in this case the top levels of the Chinese Communist Party. And when you’re the head of a political party that puts political power above all else, sometimes that’s your calculus: how will they use this technical advantage to disthrone us?
The difference between seeing political power as a duty to be properly discharged vs it being used to further one’s advantage can make for interesting gymnastics in political life.
