China announces people to be tracked by mobile phone

[patric]

It's not enough that China is freaking out about democracy protests in the middle east, now they are giving the black-helicopter people cred by actually announcing that they are using people's cell phones to spy on them:


On Wednesday Beijing officials announced they intended to monitor the movements of millions of residents via their mobile phones. One official was quoted on a government website as saying the new program would provide ''real-time information about a user's activity''.

The project aims to monitor all Beijing residents who use mobile phones - about 20 million people - to detect unusually large gatherings. One official said the primary use would be to detect and ease traffic and subway congestion. But Chinese media reports said government officials could use the data to detect and prevent protests.

The government's actions this week are the latest in a steady process of restricting speech and assembly freedoms, which has increased after anti-government protests in Tibet in March 2008 and in the western region of Xinjiang in 2009.

The limitations follow two weeks of harsh treatment of political activists, possibly inspired by fear the upheaval in the Middle East could spread to China.

http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/beijing-to-stymie-protests-by-spying-on-mobile-phones-20110304-1bi3d.html

[patric]

China plans to track cellphone users, sparking human rights concerns
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2011/03/china_said_it_may_begin.html

In an announcement, made through Beijing's Municipal People's Government Web site, the Chinese government said it would track 17 million cellphone users in Beijing through location technology to "publish real-time dynamic information to ease congestion and improve the efficiency of public travel."

"What happens when you start tracking cellphone users is that you maintain a constant history of what users are doing, their habits, who they associate with," said Joshua Gruenspecht, a cyber security fellow at the U.S.-based Center for Democracy and Technology.

"The government can then use that history against people and for human rights reasons, that can be very politically disturbing," he said.




China plays follow the phone
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/04/chinese_tracking/

That's just like the systems deployed in UK shopping centres today, which triangulate mobile transmissions to track shoppers around the centre without ever knowing (or caring) who the shopper is. The flow of individuals is valuable, particularly to centres, who want to know about footfall past specific premises and how many different stores a shopper visits.

The Chinese system doesn't even seem to be using that degree of complexity, with the People's Daily suggesting that cell loading (the number of people connected to a specific cell) should be granular enough. The South China Morning Post, on the other hand, takes that concept and runs with it, talking about tracking of individuals "whether in the bathroom, on the subway or in Tiananmen Square", suggesting the Chinese government fears public gatherings might lead to revolution, and that this can now be prevented "with the help of supercomputers" for some reasons.

That's not to say mobile phones can't be used to track people, but most authorities don't bother until after the fact. In Europe, one's mobile operator stores one's movements over the past year ready to hand over to the authorities on demand. Should the UK police want to know if you attended a particular meeting on a particular night then that information is there for them, and it's hard to imagine China being any different. The question is what degree of judicial oversight is maintained, and if one trusts the authorities to defer to that oversight.

Real-time tracking of the entire population sounds scary, but in reality it's already happening and the Beijing project is probably, genuinely, about spotting traffic jams.