7th March 2011
China To Be First State to Openly Monitor Citizens’ Location
Mark Hanson
It may well appear innocuous enough: a simple, technologically-driven method of easing congestion, enabling the authorities to accurately plan the road, rail and bus networks of an over-populated and increasingly congested city. Welcome to the spin!
The news, coming as it does from China, has been met with dismay from human rights activists, and I share that concern. The method that is to be employed, according to the Chinese newspaper Beijing Morning Post reporting on the 2nd March, is to use a method facilitated by the mobile phone network. The information gathered would include the movements and location of citizens in Beijing, and the proposals will be initially deployed in the areas of Hui Longguang and Tian Tongyuan in the north of the city. The idea is to roll-out the system to cover the whole city.
China has, according to the Guardian, already set up a system where mobile phone users have to register their SIM with the authorities. Wikipedia suggests that the tracking system can be used to locate individuals quite specifically. Wikipedia states:
“Services may achieve a precision of down to 50 meters in urban areas where mobile traffic and density of antenna towers (base stations) is sufficiently high.”
The main concern, however, comes from the ability this system will give the authorities to note when large groups of people are gathering in one place and potentially take action to disperse any political protests before they gather momentum.
The concern is real, and is especially real given China’s record on human rights, yet we must take a lesson from this for the UK and Europe. The ostensible rationale for this development makes good sense – much more sense than the UK’s sweeping aside of constitutional and judicial traditions in order to weed out potential terrorists – and we should not be surprised if the secret methods of political control become more acceptable and open as time progresses.
