Daily Deal: The Two Million Dollar Puzzle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Are you a fan of solving puzzles? Do you like winning money? Then MSCHF has a treat for you. MSCHF, the makers of THE ONE MILLION DOLLAR PUZZLE, now brings you THE TWO MILLION DOLLAR PUZZLE. All you have to do is buy this 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, complete it, and get a chance to win anything from $1 to $1,000,000! And everyone is a winner, there are no losers. This time around two puzzles will have the $1,000,000 code in them. You can get one puzzle for $30, 2 for $56, or 4 for $100.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Kentucky Supreme Court Says Warrants Are Needed For Real-Time Cell Location Pings

Privacy

from the get-a-warrant dept

In 2018, the Supreme Court declared warrantless access to historical cell site location information unconstitutional, given the privacy implications of being able to track someone’s movements over days or weeks without bothering to secure a warrant. Prior to this decision, cell site location info (CSLI) was treated as a third party record, requiring neither a warrant nor probable cause to obtain.

It did not extend this coverage to real-time access to CSLI, tower dumps, or ping requests made to service providers to engage in quasi-real time tracking. However, other courts in the nation have been willing to extend the coverage of the Carpenter decision, applying it to other third party records, including real-time acquisition of cell location info.

One of the courts to do so was the Kentucky state appeals court. In a case dealing with the apprehension of a robbery suspect, the court suppressed real-time location info law enforcement obtained without a warrant from a cell service provider — information that proved instrumental in officers’ location and arrest of the suspect.

This decision said this information was no longer covered by the Third Party Doctrine, but by the Fourth Amendment.

Thus, because pinging a cell phone enables the police almost instantaneously to track individuals far beyond the public thoroughfare into areas where they would have a reasonable, legitimate expectation of privacy, we conclude that a warrant is required to acquire real-time CSLI.

The government appealed the 2020 appellate decision, hoping the state’s top court would reverse the lower court’s decision. This bet has failed to pay off. The Kentucky Supreme Court has affirmed the lower court’s decision, declaring that access to real-time cell site location info requires the use of a warrant. The decision [PDF] also affirms the denial of good faith to the officers who obtained this info. (via FourthAmendment.com)

Like the Court of Appeals, we find that the police acquisition of Reed’s real-time CSLI was a warrantless, unreasonable search, and we find that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply in this case. Accordingly, we affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals to reverse the trial court’s judgment and remand this case to the trial court for further proceedings.

Like the appeals court, the Supreme Court says good faith doesn’t apply because “the officers were not acting in reliance of binding precedent.” Unlike far too many other courts, Kentucky’s top court refuses to grant good faith simply because no precedent exists. It holds cops in the state to a higher standard: a need for affirmative judicial precedent that supports their action, rather than simply allowing cops to abuse legal gray areas until contravening precedent is generated.

Key to the court’s findings here is how this information is obtained. Rather than being a third party record created by someone simply having their phone on while near cell towers, the location data obtained here required the interference of the cell service provider.

Real-time CSLI is not a passive location record but data generated by an affirmative action—a “ping” taken by the cell-service provider at the behest of a law enforcement officer. By “pinging” an individual’s cell phone, the cell service provider is able to determine, instantaneously, the cell phone’s location in relation to the available cell sites and to communicate that location information to law enforcement.

And that’s where the search moves from “reasonable” to “unreasonable,” says the court.

In obtaining an individual’s cell phone’s real-time CSLI, police commandeer the cell phone and its transmissions for the purpose of locating that individual. We find this usurpation of an individual’s private property profoundly invasive, and we liken it to a technological trespass. Such an appropriation of an individual’s cell phone is precisely the sort of invasion that we find the average citizen unwilling to accept.

Historic CSLI is intrusive because it allows law enforcement to track someone’s movements after the fact, providing officers with plenty of information about a person’s life, habits, contacts, and other activities. Prospective (“real-time”) CSLI is intrusive because it forces someone’s phone to, in essence, “answer” to law enforcement by providing its current location.

The government tried to argue that real-time pings were no different than observing a driver on a public road… apparently because law enforcement performed the stop on a public road. The court finds this argument ridiculous.

We do not disagree that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements on a public road and, thus, law enforcement may constitutionally observe those movements. But at issue in this case is not the observation of Reed’s movements on a roadway or the traffic stop performed on Reed’s vehicle but the acquisition of Reed’s CSLI that enabled officers to conduct a dragnet to intercept Reed’s vehicle. At the time police pinged Reed’s cell phone, Reed was not under visual police surveillance. Instead, the only reason police were able to locate and surveil Reed on a roadway was as a result of their acquisition of Reed’s CSLI. It is the constitutionality of the acquisition of Reed’s CSLI, not of his traffic stop, that we consider today. As such, we regard Knotts as inapplicable in this case. We find that a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy in his CSLI is unaffected by his or his cell phone’s physical location at the time the CSLI is generated or acquired by police.

Furthermore, the court says, giving the government’s other argument (that the third party doctrine is engaged just because a cell user has granted permission for third parties to gather data) credence would allow widespread abuse of third parties to bypass the Fourth Amendment.

Permitting application of the third-party doctrine to real-time CSLI would drastically alter the landscape of digital privacy. By the same logic offered by the Commonwealth, law enforcement could contact application developers whose applications are authorized to use the camera and microphone on a cell phone. Law enforcement could then, via those application developers, commandeer the cell phone as a photo, video, and audio surveillance device, simply because the cell phone’s owner granted authorization to those applications.

The government loses its evidence (again) and the case returns to the trial court where prosecutors can try to put the suspect behind bars, but without the benefit of the CSLI info or evidence derived from the traffic stop that followed the warrantless pings. And, again, the Kentucky court system holds officers in the state to a higher “good faith” standard — one that says cops don’t get to play fast and loose with unsettled law unless they like seeing their evidence tossed. More courts should do the same.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, csli, kentucky, location information, real time cell location, third party doctrine, tower dumps, warrants

‘Big Telecom’ Still Wants ‘Big Tech’ To Give Them Billions Of Dollars For No Coherent Reason

Broadband

from the troll-toll dept

For literally twenty-five years now, telecom monopoly executives the world over have been trying to force big tech companies billions of dollars for no coherent reason. It began with AT&T’s attempt to double dip on Google; which spurred the entire net neutrality war. The complaint by telecoms has long since moved global, as they try to get gullible politicians to try and force tech giants to give them billions.

The (false) argument always involves some variation of the claim that tech giants are getting a “free ride” on the internet or somehow not “paying their share,” despite the fact that companies like Google pay billions of dollars not only for their own bandwidth, but increasingly own all manner of core internet and telecom infrastructure, from fiber transit lines to undersea fiber runs (Google even runs a residential ISP).

The argument by telecom lobbyists (and the regulators and politicians paid to love them) is ever present in the U.S., but has heated up in Europe the last few months, as the EU debates the digital policy trajectory that will shape tech policy across the EU for the next decade.

The gambit, as it did in the EU again last week, always involves a telecom lobbyist getting some politician or regulator to push the idea as if it’s just a good faith gambit to conquer that pesky “digital divide”:

The EU executive’s chief officials on digital policy, Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager and Commissioner Thierry Breton hinted at the plans in recent weeks. In an interview last month, Breton told Les Echos newspaper that telecoms operators weren’t getting “the right return on investment” from maintaining the networks, and it was time “to reorganise the fair remuneration of the networks.”

It doesn’t take much for a telecom giant lobbyist to get entire teams of politicians cheering in favor of giving their employer billions of dollars… just because:

In a letter sent to Vestager and Breton last week and obtained by POLITICO, five leading members of the European Parliament from center-left to right groups called on the Commission to step up their efforts to remove hurdles that prevent the telecoms industry from investing in infrastructure and to incentivize “the roll-out of high-speed electronic communications networks” in Europe.

This is the exact same argument being recently made by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr here in the States. Carr has rubber stamped every big telecom policy since being seated, including the wholesale demolition of broadband consumer protections. He’s incapable of admitting the U.S. broadband sector even has a competition problem, yet is first in line cheering to subsidize industry giants further.

These arguments always (intentionally) ignore some things; namely that telecoms receive untold billions in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks, and regulatory favors for networks that always, quite mysteriously, wind up half completed. If a policymaker is serious about shoring up access, cracking down on waste and fraud in telecom oversight would be the very first place to start. The omission is usually fairly telling.

When it comes to telecom monopolies the world over, nobody gets a free ride. Everybody pays, and pays, and pays some more. And when said telecoms control the policymaking apparatus (which is the case in most countries), politicians, who should be working for the public interest, but are, instead, in the telecoms’ pockets, are usually easy to spot by their tendency to want to throw billions more at the problem without functional reform.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, eu, free ride, high speed internet, subsidies, telecom

Yet Another EU Data Protection Authority Says Google Analytics Violates The Law

Privacy

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

It’s kind of weird that in some convoluted way, the NSA may be killing Google Analytics, at least in the EU. You may recall that back in 2020, Max Schrems won his second big data privacy effort against the EU/US Privacy Shield agreement, which allowed data from people in the EU to be transferred to US companies under certain conditions. The “Privacy Shield” was a concept the EU and US cooked up after their earlier setup, the EU/US “safe harbor” framework was tossed out in an earlier case brought by Schrems. In both cases, a key underlying issue was the NSA’s ability to conduct mass surveillance on the internet. The failure to fix that between the safe harbor framework and the Privacy Shield meant that the Privacy Shield was doomed from the start.

Earlier this year, the US and EU announced a new version of the Privacy Shield though details were still lacking. Assuming the NSA isn’t giving up its powers to surveil much of the internet, it doesn’t seem likely to survive Schrems’ next attempt.

In the meantime, though, it’s causing all sorts of issues. And many of those issues are basically: Google Analytics. Most recently, Italy’s data protection authority, said that using Google Analytics violates the GDPR by sending data overseas, something that can’t be done without a new Privacy Shield (or equivalent) agreement between the US and the EU.

As TechCrunch points out, this decision is just the latest in an increasingly long line of similar rulings:

Earlier this month, France’s data protection regulator issued updated guidance warning over illegal use of Google Analytics — following a similar finding of fault with a local website’s use of the software in February.

[…]

Austria’s DPA also upheld a similar complaint over a site’s use of Google Analytics in January.

While the European Parliament found itself in hot water over the same core issue at the start of the year.

Leaving aside the ongoing irony of the EU Parliament’s own website violating the GDPR, at the heart of all this remains: the NSA basically has screwed up Google Analytics for the EU.

Now, there are all sorts of reasons to dislike Google Analytics — we ditched it ourselves — but it’s important to remember that at the core of this, is the NSA basically making things impossible for a number of American internet companies. This is one of many reasons (and certainly lower in importance than just basic civil rights and liberties) why it’s still amazing that we’ve more or less allowed the NSA to continue its surveillance efforts with only minor modifications in the decade or so since Ed Snowden leaked the details.

Filed Under: data sharing, eu, gdpr, google analytics, italy, nsa, privacy shield, safe harbor, surveillance
Companies: google

Parody Post About Nintendo’s IP Bullying Hits All The Right Notes

Too Much Free Time

from the it's-a-me dept

When I repeatedly use Nintendo as something of a virtual punching bag, it pisses off some of the company’s loyal fans. This has never made sense to me. Those fans should be pissed at Nintendo and all the different avenues the company takes just to make sure being a Nintendo fan is as difficult as possible. After all, it’s not like I’m just making this stuff up. Nintendo really is the Disney of the video game world when it comes to being an IP protectionist bully.

It is so bad, in fact, that you’ll come across parody posts on sites discussing made up bullying actions and relating them back to Nintendo. Earlier this year, for instance, we discussed a post on hard-drive.net, one which is clearly parody, talking about Sega undergoing a heel-turn and deciding to be an IP bully. Or, as the post put it, “go full Nintendo.” It was close enough to sounding real to be funny, but it was parody.

Well, that same site is back with another parody article, but this time they decided to dive into the purely absurd.

KYOTO, Japan — Video game giant Nintendo has recently filed a copyright claim on the country of Italy, according to a company press conference.

“It is after much deliberation and discussion that Nintendo has come to the conclusion that we will be filing a copyright claim against Italy,” Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said during a pre-recorded address uploaded to the official company YouTube channel. “The clear instances of infringement, such as adding ‘-a’ to the end of words, growing mustaches, and eating mushrooms, that have been occurring within Italy have gone unchecked for too long. It is our job to protect the hard work of our staff and executives.”

Unlike the Sega post, this one is obviously not believable. However, just like the Sega post, the only reason any of this is actually funny is because of how already absurd the behavior of Nintendo is when it comes to intellectual property matters. No, the company isn’t going to sue Italy over the supposed existence of stereotypical “Italians”. But the company’s actual IP enforcement actions are so silly and overwrought that the joke still works.

The rest of the post is short but worth reading. It has a fake quote from a big Nintendo fan that, by my reading, is fairly spot on. It’s complete with all the apologies and excuses those that remain Nintendo fans tend to roll out when the company is criticized. Having been on the receiving end, I suppose I now know what it feels like to say anything less than glorifying Elon Musk. The vibes seem to be the same.

So, it’s funny, but also kind of not funny. This is the sort of thing that only works because Nintendo really is an IP bully and maximalist company.

Filed Under: copyright, ip enforcement, parody
Companies: nintendo

Google Gives In To Republican Political Spammers: Launching Pilot Program To Whitelist Them Out Of Spam

Email

from the spam-spam-spam-spam dept

What a dumb news cycle. As we noted, mainly driven by the preferred political spam mongers for Republicans, a study from some computer scientists was completely misrepresented to argue (falsely) that Google was deliberately censoring Republican politician emails. As we’ve repeatedly noted, the study actually found that while a clean Gmail account would flag more Republican emails as spam than Democrats, (1) the reverse was true of the two other most popular web-based email providers, Yahoo and Outlook, and (2) the researchers found that if someone actively manages their spam flags, that this discrepancy disappears in Gmail.

But, Republicans and their favorite spammer can’t let facts or accuracy get in the way of a moral panic. So they got Fox News to spin it into a bullshit, inaccurate story about Google censoring conservatives, then got some Republicans to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing that this was an unfair advantage that Google was giving Democrats. Finally, they got an incredibly stupid bill introduced in both the House and the Senate to basically say that email providers can no longer mark political emails as spam.

Apparently, this stupid misleading culture war, that anyone with even the slightest understanding of how spam filters work could have debunked for anyone, was apparently gaining steam. And in this ridiculous world we live in, once “the narrative” takes over, facts and any sense of reality go right out the window.

So, just after Google CEO Sundar Pichai visited Capitol Hill, where he was apparently yelled at by a bunch of Republicans, Google has announced a “pilot program” to whitelist candidate emails. The program is not live yet, but Google has first asked the FEC for the greenlight, to make sure that this program doesn’t run afoul of any election laws.

Google’s pilot program, per the June 21 filing, would be for “authorized candidate committees, political party committees and leadership political action committees registered with the FEC.”

• It would make campaign emails from such groups exempt from spam detection as long as they don’t violate Gmail’s policies around phishing, malware or illegal content.
• Instead, when users would receive an email from a campaign for the first time, they would get a “prominent” notification asking if they want to keep receiving them, and would still have the ability to opt out of subsequent emails.

Basically, because a bunch of Republicans (1) are bad at political emails, (2) can’t take any personal responsibility at all, (3) love any kind of moral panic about big tech not liking them… we all now will have to deal with more political spam in our inboxes.

What a stupid world.

Filed Under: elections, email, filtering, politics, spam
Companies: google

Italian Exploit Developer Follows Hacking Team’s Lead, Sells Powerful Spyware To Human Rights Violators

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the Italy-is-the-new-Israel dept

Italian malware developer Hacking Team began making headlines in 2014. Infections uncovered by researchers at Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Russia’s Kaspersky Lab were traced back to servers located in the United States, Canada, UK, and Ecuador. The US servers topped the list. The second place finisher, however, was Kazakhstan.

Here’s a summary of the Kazakhstan government’s human rights abuses, as compiled by the US State Department:

Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killing by or on behalf of the government; torture by and on behalf of the government; political prisoners; problems with the independence of the judiciary; restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet; interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; restrictions on political participation; corruption; trafficking in persons; and restrictions on workers’ freedom of association.

Hacking Team’s willingness to sell to abusive authoritarians was further exposed when it was (ironically) hacked by outsiders and its internal documents shared with the general public. The company’s internal “wiki” contained a list of customers, which included UN-blacklisted country Sudan. It also sold its malware to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Malaysia — countries all known for their long histories of human rights abuses. Its exploits also ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Hacking Team has since been absorbed by another entity and now does business (but what kind?) under the name “Memento Labs.”

There’s a new Italian player on the phone exploit scene. RCS Labs is filling the void Hacking Team left in its apparent demise, apparently starting with none other than one of Hacking Team’s most infamous customers.

Cyber-security researchers have unearthed a new enterprise-grade Android spyware called ‘Hermit’ that is being used by the governments via SMS messages to target high-profile people like business executives, human rights activists, journalists, academics and government officials.

The team at cyber-security company Lookout Threat Lab uncovered the ‘surveillanceware’ that was used by the government of Kazakhstan in April, four months after nationwide protests against government policies were violently suppressed.

“Based on our analysis, the spyware, which we named ‘Hermit’ is likely developed by Italian spyware vendor RCS Lab and Tykelab Srl, a telecommunications solutions company we suspect to be operating as a front company,” the researchers said in a blog post.

A blog post by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) suggests RCS has relied on local ISPs to help deliver its malware payloads.

All campaigns TAG observed originated with a unique link sent to the target. Once clicked, the page attempted to get the user to download and install a malicious application on either Android or iOS. In some cases, we believe the actors worked with the target’s ISP to disable the target’s mobile data connectivity. Once disabled, the attacker would send a malicious link via SMS asking the target to install an application to recover their data connectivity. We believe this is the reason why most of the applications masqueraded as mobile carrier applications. When ISP involvement is not possible, applications are masqueraded as messaging applications.

Not quite as elegant as NSO Group’s zero-click exploit, Pegasus. But just as nefarious, seeing as it cloaks itself as an official message from targets’ internet service providers. And RCS appears to be far less selective about who it sells to. That’s where the front company comes in, which likely enables RCS to provide malware to foreign governments the Italian government would rather local companies didn’t sell to, like the following:

RCS Lab has engaged with military and intelligence agencies in Pakistan, Chile, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan.

None of these countries will ever top the “Least Likely To Abuse Powerful Spyware” list anytime soon. Marketing the “Hermit” malware as “lawful intercept” won’t decrease lawless applications. The only thing that can prevent abuse is refusing to sell to countries that routinely abuse their own citizens for fun and profit.

And RCS has apparently found a way to bypass Apple’s usually robust app store safeguards to deploy its malware, as The Verge reports:

Attackers were able to distribute infected apps on iOS by enrolling in Apple’s Developer Enterprise Program. This allowed bad actors to bypass the App Store’s standard vetting process and obtain a certificate that “satisfies all of the iOS code signing requirements on any iOS devices.”

It’s certain more evidence of abusive deployment will come to light in the near future, now that multiple security researchers have detected infections that can be traced back to RCS malware. And if RCS insists on doing business with shady governments, it can expect to find itself in the same sanctioned boat as Israeli malware merchants NSO Group and Candiru.

Filed Under: malware, spyware, surveillanmce
Companies: hacking team, memento labs, rcs labs, tykelab srl

Angry Crypto Firm Posts Weird Cease & Desist Letter To Its Own Blog; DMs It To Critics

Legal Issues

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

You know things are going just great in crypto-land when a cryptocurrency company has to post a vague cease-and-desist letter to its own blog. Everything about this is bizarre, but it culminated in this very strange cease-and-desist blog post by Nexo.

There is a separate blog post that sort of, but not quite, tries to explain what’s going on, noting that a Twitter user has started to spread a false story about the company. And, indeed, Nexo makes a compelling case that the Twitter user “otteroooo” posted a blatantly false (and most likely defamatory — something I don’t say lightly) claim about Nexo’s co-founder, possibly confusing him (whether on purpose or not) with a very different individual who has a somewhat similar (but really not that close) name.

So, yes, sure, I can totally understand Nexo being mad. And I can totally understand and appreciate Nexo posting its compelling argument for why otterroooo’s claims are full of shit.

But… that still doesn’t explain posting a cease-and-desist to your blog. For that, you have to look elsewhere, and see that Nexo is apparently sending Direct Messages to people on social media when they retweet the otteroooo tweets, and (1) sharing with them the explanation blog post and (2) the cease-and-desist.

Except, even then, this doesn’t make much sense. The cease-and-desist is not specific (because, how can it be when it’s just out there for everyone) and completely overstates what is “unlawful.”

If they want to send a cease-and-desist letter to people spreading false information, there are ways to do that, but posting it to your blog seems like a way to call negative attention to yourself, and get you ridiculed, much more than it is likely to get anyone to cease or desist even if you have a decent argument for why people should cease and desist.

Filed Under: cease and desist, defamation
Companies: nexo

The Future Of Policing In China Is Pervasive, Surveillance-Driven Law Enforcement Crystal Balls

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the pre-criming-billions dept

China is choked by surveillance. It’s everywhere and it touches every aspect of its citizens’ lives. The government uses it to stifle dissent, control the population, and persecute undesirables.

Law enforcement has been doing pre-crime for years, but China’s version is amped up and all-consuming. “Guilty until forever” is the guideline in China, where massive amounts of data from surveillance dragnets allow the government to assume things about people. It also allows them to convert normal activities into crime predicates by assuming the worst about its own citizens. This New York Times report shows just how far off the pre-crime deep end China has gone. Everything is on the table because, well, everything is available to a government that immerses its citizens in always-on surveillance.

The latest generation of technology digs through the vast amounts of data collected on their daily activities to find patterns and aberrations, promising to predict crimes or protests before they happen. They target potential troublemakers in the eyes of the Chinese government — not only those with a criminal past but also vulnerable groups, including ethnic minorities, migrant workers and those with a history of mental illness.

They can warn the police if a victim of a fraud tries to travel to Beijing to petition the government for payment or a drug user makes too many calls to the same number. They can signal officers each time a person with a history of mental illness gets near a school.

The only way to opt-out (so to speak) is to get off the surveillance grid. The Times report details the efforts taken by 74-year-old Zhang Yuqiao, who has been petitioning the government regularly for years. To avoid being caught in China’s surveillance net (and punished for bothering his government too often), Zhang turns off his phone, uses cash, and buys multiple rail tickets to destinations he’s never going to travel to.

That sort of effort may pay off in the short run. But it’s only a matter of time before the Chinese government decides a dearth of generated data is itself indicative of criminal plans or activities. After all, even the US government tends to believe these same things (the carrying of cash, tickets purchased at the last minute or for one-way trips) are things only criminals do.

And, much like every other government in the world, the Chinese government trumpets the successes of this pre-crime program that affects billions by pointing out the rounding error’s-worth of wins the system has provided. The wins, though, are underwhelming. Two cases highlighted by the Chinese government involved a fake migration permit and the apprehension of someone involved in a pyramid scheme. Not exactly the sort serious crime/national security threat one would assume an expensive, expansive system would be used for.

To accomplish this, the Chinese government is recruiting local tech companies. One is Megvii, an AI startup that has, for the past five years, created a “search engine for crime” that “digs out ordinary people who seem innocent” to help the government punish people for things like spending too much time at a train station.

Another is Hikvision, which supplies cameras to many of the Chinese government internment camps. The end goal of this collaboration is to shield the government from controversy and criticism.

In 2022, the police in Tianjin bought software made by a Megvii competitor, Hikvision, that aims to predict protests. The system collects data on legions of Chinese petitioners, a general term in China that describes people who try to file complaints about local officials with higher authorities.

It then scores petitioners on the likelihood that they will travel to Beijing. In the future, the data will be used to train machine-learning models, according to a procurement document.

Local officials want to prevent such trips to avoid political embarrassment or exposure of wrongdoing. And the central government doesn’t want groups of disgruntled citizens gathering in the capital.

Authorities are invited to fill in the blanks as to perceived temperament of those listed as problematic petitioners, often using loaded terms like “paranoid” or “short tempered.” This tracks directly with other efforts uncovered by the New York Times using leaked or otherwise obtained documents detailing Chinese surveillance — ones that include increased surveillance of “key persons” targeted by the government: people with mental illnesses, migrant workers, “idle” teenagers, ethnic minorities, and people suffering from HIV.

As for staying off the grid, like Zhang Yuqiao has tried to do? Well, as he found out when he started dodging the government’s surveillance, the grid comes to you. Photos in article show several cameras set up near Zhang’s home. According to Zhang, there are no other cameras in the village. When he has tried to dodge surveillance by turning off his phone, officers show up at his house to make sure he isn’t off on another trip to Beijing to again demand compensation for the torture of his family during the Cultural Revolution.

That’s how pre-crime works. The surveillance net is deployed. Data and recordings are fed to algorithms. The government adds its own bias. And out pops the sort of thing we’re seeing here: the unending persecution of someone who just wants the government to be held accountable for its actions. That’s the sort of threat the Chinese government really fears. Regular criminal activity is a nuisance. But government criticism is dangerous.

Filed Under: ai, china, pre-crime, surveillance
Companies: hikvision, megvii