China is considering tracking its citizens using their phones, according to a post made March 2nd on the Beijing Municipal People’s Government website.
The tracking is to be done, according to the website, to reduce traffic congestion. Coming as it does from the country that has erected the "Great Firewall of China" to prevent citizens from reaching "prohibited sites," most would say that statement should be taken with a grain of salt. The post (translated by Google) says:
Through the base station with a range of clues and background processing, the staff can target specific areas and population distribution of people at different times the flow of people travel to accurately grasp the situation. These include people which are in metro or bus and other transport, and which direction the traffic is too large and the line or not saturation. Basic information on the analysis of these massive, but also help Beijing achieve further optimization of transit network.Eventually, the site said, the program (which is explicitly translated as “Platform for Citizen Movement Information”) would be able to provide the public with reports that would tell them how to optimize their travel on a particular day.
Li Guoguang, Deputy Director of Social Development in the Science and Technology Commission said that more than 70 percent of Beijing's residents have cell phones. While this sounds like an excellent idea for an overcrowded populace, it's hard to look at this without wondering how much of this program will be subverted to use for tracking of more than just traffic patterns, but dissidents.
Via: TheNextWeb, Beijing Municipal People’s Government website
The tracking is to be done, according to the website, to reduce traffic congestion. Coming as it does from the country that has erected the "Great Firewall of China" to prevent citizens from reaching "prohibited sites," most would say that statement should be taken with a grain of salt. The post (translated by Google) says:
Through the base station with a range of clues and background processing, the staff can target specific areas and population distribution of people at different times the flow of people travel to accurately grasp the situation. These include people which are in metro or bus and other transport, and which direction the traffic is too large and the line or not saturation. Basic information on the analysis of these massive, but also help Beijing achieve further optimization of transit network.Eventually, the site said, the program (which is explicitly translated as “Platform for Citizen Movement Information”) would be able to provide the public with reports that would tell them how to optimize their travel on a particular day.
Li Guoguang, Deputy Director of Social Development in the Science and Technology Commission said that more than 70 percent of Beijing's residents have cell phones. While this sounds like an excellent idea for an overcrowded populace, it's hard to look at this without wondering how much of this program will be subverted to use for tracking of more than just traffic patterns, but dissidents.
Via: TheNextWeb, Beijing Municipal People’s Government website
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