Information/Technology - 44. page

Radio France Internationale reported that, according to an article in the South China Morning Post, the Futian Metro Station in Shenzhen plans to introduce a facial recognition payment system. The pilot version of the facial recognition payment system to be operated at the Futian Station is a system in which passengers can pay for their transportation expenses through their personal account when they scan their faces on a large screen. The launch date of the system has not been disclosed. The advantage of the facial recognition system is that people can travel on the subway efficiently during the rush commuting hours. The number of people that take the Shenzhen Metro is five million per day. The facial recognition system has been put into use in all corners of Chinese society except the subway system. Radio France Internationale also quoted Pressecitron, a French media which stated that there may be technical problems in the event of a twin or body double. In addition, people’s daily routes are being recorded which causes concerns over security issues and the breach of personal information.

Source: Radio France Internationale, March 16, 2019
http://rfi.my/3ose.T

According to Shanghai Municipal Planning and Resource Bureau, starting from April 1, a self-service inquiry terminal for personal property registration data will be available for the general public to use. At that time, residents can check their house and land registration information using their ID card and facial recognition feature on a self-service inquiry terminal set up in their own district. They can use the terminal or go to the municipal government’s “one stop network” platform to look up property registration, as well as location and mortgage information. At present, Xuhui District is having a pilot test of the self-service inquiry terminal.

Source: The Paper, March 3, 2019
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_3067624

The Chinese surveillance industry, a network of hundreds of millions of cameras, is generating more and more tycoons. The four billionaires with the largest amount of money have total assets exceeding $12.1 billion.

Gong Hongjia, founder of Hikvision, has a net worth of 7.2 billion. Dai Lin, chairman of the board of Tiandy’s, is estimated to have a personal wealth of 1.4 billion. The other two billionaires are Fu Liquan, the chairman of Dahua Tech, and Huang Li, the head of Wuhan Guide Infrared Co.

In 2015, Dai Lin developed the industry’s first infrared-free 24-hour full-color camera and in 2016 he launched the Ultra-Low Light Box Camera, which delivers high resolution color pictures in a dark environment at 0.0008 lux illumination. Dai Lin’s facial recognition system, which was developed in 2017, can achieve a recognition accuracy of more than 90 percent.

Human rights organizations worry that China’s use of surveillance technology for big data collection is used to strengthen social control and intensify the government’s suppression of civil rights. Out of national security considerations, the U.S. government has blacklisted products from Hikvision and Dahua from official purchases.

China plans to implement a comprehensive and real time public security monitoring network by 2020. According to official data, the Chinese government’s domestic security spending in 2017 accounted for 6.1 percent of total government spending, or about 1.2 trillion yuan (US$180 billion).

Source: Central News Agency, February 23, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902230205.aspx

Recently a junior high school student in China bought a handwriting robot to do his homework. The robot is able to mimic the user’s handwriting. The media exposure caused a buying spree for the product.

According to a mainland Chinese media report, a woman surnamed Zhang said that she found out that her daughter, a third year junior high school student, completed her handwriting homework within only two days and that the writing was neat and had no typos or even edits. While cleaning her daughter’s room, Zhang found the robot machine. The instruction manual said that it could imitate various handwriting styles. After she was questioned, her daughter admitted that she purchased this handwriting robot for 800 yuan (US$120) on the Internet.

Now there are hot sales online for a number of writing robots. The price ranges from 400 yuan (US$60) to 1,200 yuan (US$180). Once the software is downloaded, it allows the machine to recognize the user’s handwriting. If you place a pen on the front end, it can start mimicking the user’s handwriting on paper and write the specified content. A store said that after the Chinese New Year, most of the customers who inquired about the handwriting robots were students. They were concerned about whether the imitation of the writing style was good and whether the teacher would be able to discover that it was a robot’s writing.

Source: Central News Agency, February 21, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902210042.aspx

WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. Counting monthly active users, it is one of the world’s largest standalone mobile apps; it has over 1 billion monthly active users. On February 23, WeChat released a statement that the platform has severely resisted vulgar and harmful content and fraud activities and has blocked more than 40,000 official accounts. WeChat users can register for an official account, which enables them to push feeds to subscribers, interact with subscribers, and provide them with services.

In the announcement, WeChat said that the vulgar and false exaggerated content hurt the user’s aesthetic and reading experience and affected the ecological health of the platform. In this regard, so far since the beginning of 2019, WeChat has banned and processed 966 official accounts that sent pornographic and violent information and deleted 2,267 related articles; it has blocked 36,556 official accounts for sending vulgar content and deleted 73,318 related articles; it has banned 3,070 official accounts for spreading exaggerated and misleading information and deleted 3,447 related articles.

Source: The Paper, February 24, 2019
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_3032502