China’s Total Information Awareness: Second-Order Challenges - Lawfare

TIA, China edition

"One challenge relates to U.S. intelligence collection. If the Chinese government can recognize every person on the street and easily track a person’s comings and goings, this will make it even harder for foreign intelligence agencies to operate inside the country. Not only will U.S. and other Western intelligence agents be even easier to follow (electronically), but the Chinese government will also be able to identify Chinese nationals who might be working with Western intelligence services—perhaps using machine learning and pattern detection to extract patterns of life. China’s facial recognition efforts thus facilitate its counterintelligence capacities.

A second challenge is posed by the fact that this technology surely will spread to other (probably authoritarian) countries. China seems committed to becoming a (maybe the) leader in artificial intelligence, and is promoting startups that focus in this area. No doubt China will seek to export AI technology to other states that seek a high level of government and social control over their populations. Sooner or later, the United States therefore will need to decide what it thinks about the use of pervasive video surveillance and, more specifically, whether this kind of surveillance violates basic human rights norms."

China’s Total Information Awareness: Second-Order Challenges - Lawfare