
Security lapse exposed a Chinese smart city surveillance system - gulbrandr
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/03/china-smart-city-exposed/
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AFascistWorld
Recently China captured a fugitive when he was sending friends to board a
plane, 4 images with 98% similarity captured by the airport's cameras.

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3007827/chin...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3007827/chinese-
student-wanted-killing-mother-captured-after-three-years)

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MeteorMarc
Curious that they have a column "attractive" in the person's features which
seems to correlate with age ...

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crehn
Curious about the other variables affecting it. Perhaps facial feature ratios
compared to some gold standard?

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Angostura
Could well be a simple symmetry measure.

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baud147258
> Elasticsearch database

Considering that ES db aren't secured by default, it's not surprising that
someone downloaded the data

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headsoup
Surely this is one of those technological advances where on reviewing the
'should we' it becomes clear the negatives far outweigh the positives and it
is stopped... Surely.

Reminds me of a radio interview I heard this morning from a mining CEO
awaiting environmental sign-off for a new mine: equipment and resources ready
to get going with a couple of days notice. Not even a matter of if, but when.

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yohann305
from the article: “The security researcher passed details of the database to
TechCrunch in an effort to get the data secured”

How is the data more secured by sending it to a news agency? Can someone
explain? IMHO it’s the exact opposite, data is getting more eyeballs now,
right?

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wigginus
Secure(d) has two meanings, in this case it has the meaning "obtained".

See #10 at
[https://www.dictionary.com/browse/secure](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/secure).

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isoprophlex
> The system also uses its facial recognition systems to detect ethnicities
> and labels them — such as “汉族” for Han Chinese, the main ethnic group of
> China — and also “维族” — or Uyghur Muslims, an ethnic minority under
> persecution by Beijing.

I'm getting some strong ww2 death camp vibes from this...

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deogeo
On the bright side, at least they make sure their technology works for
minorities as well. Perhaps the egalitarian ideas of the West are finally
starting to take hold there.

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CallMePK
This is just so sad. 1984 is not supposed to be a manual.

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simonh
I read an interview with a former KGB officer who said that, while the book
was formally banned in the soviet union, it was circulated among national
security types as a useful fund of ideas.

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pchr8
Do you have a link for the interview?

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simonh
This was maybe a decade or so after the fall of the USSR, in one of those old
fashioned paper magazine things.

