Free to speak》When the country starts to judge who is abnormal~

◎ Zhang Shangyang

In 2017, in a smart public security pilot community in Shanghai, a man wandered for a long time, entering and leaving multiple doorways, but did not visit any residents. The system determined that the behavior was abnormal, and the police immediately received an alert on their mobile phones. If this man is really going to break into the void, this system certainly has its value. The question is, apart from preventing crime, what else are these eyes used to see?

Real-life systems have also begun to analyze human behavior and look for so-called "abnormalities" for the country. Pictured is the Key Report film. (Taken from the Internet)

From "Public Enemies", "Key Report" to "Hawkeye", Hollywood 2 or 30 years ago had already imagined: What would happen when the country could integrate surveillance, communications and personal data, and even determine who might pose a threat? Of course, movies are movies, but systems in reality have also begun to analyze people's behavior and look for so-called "abnormalities" for the country.

The problem lies in the word "abnormal". Human Rights Watch reverse-engineered the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) used by the Xinjiang police and found that it was not just criminal acts that were listed as noteworthy. Infrequent interactions with neighbors, frequent avoidance of the main entrance, some overseas connections, and even partially peaceful religious activities may come to the attention of the state. One of the reasons why a woman on the "Aksu List" was flagged by the system was that she received four overseas phone calls in March 2017. Human Rights Watch subsequently verified that the caller was from a sister living overseas, and she was later detained.

So "just don't do bad things" cannot explain the problem at this point. What bad thing did you do when you received the call from your sister? Crime, suspicion and anomaly are three different things. Crime has a legal definition, suspiciousness is a judgment, and abnormality may even be just a way of life that deviates from the "normal" set by the system. When surveillance changes from looking for criminals to looking for "deviants" among everyone, the nature has changed.

It’s not like other countries don’t have these technologies. Europe and the United States also have facial recognition, artificial intelligence and data processing capabilities, which are also used in law enforcement; however, the European Union has set strict restrictions on the use of real-time remote biometrics by the police, and the British police also have regulations such as a specific list, necessity and proportionality for the use of real-time facial recognition. The difference is not whether it can be done or not, but what the country is allowed to do.

We can install a pet monitor without any psychological burden and see where it is and what it is doing at any time; if we do the same thing as a human, we must consider privacy, authorization and purpose. The reason is simple: people are not pets.

Therefore, the question should not be "I have not done anything bad, why should I be afraid of surveillance?" but rather "If there is no crime, why should the state keep looking at it?" When the state begins to judge whether a person is "abnormal," things have already gone beyond preventing crime. Technology can help the country find criminals, but it cannot give it the power to check whether everyone is "normal." This is the problem with China: it is not approaching the boundary of human rights, but it has already crossed it.