The Chinese government was asked to put a hold on their plans to establish a big data policing platform by a right wing group on November 20. According to the protestors, the technology can violate the privacy of Chinese people, as it is capable of saving each and every detail about a person.
According to media reports, the technology which is called "Police Cloud" is capable enough to track down the activities of activists and it is designed to work beyond the international privacy policy.
"It is frightening that Chinese authorities are collecting and centralizing ever more information about hundreds of millions of ordinary people, identifying persons who deviate from what they determine to be 'normal thought,' and then surveilling them," said China director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Sophie Richardson.
The HRW, which is a non-governmental organization, has stated that the government has stored all the information about the Chinese people for years. However, their new target is to compile personal data of citizens and to share it with all the national and local departments.
HRW also mentioned that there are various applications, which are used to analyze texts, videos and security camera images in real time or near real time. This is a process which helps to reduce the crime rate in the country as well as it allows police to arbitrarily obtain information about ordinary people.
"Preventing crime is a legitimate state interest, but predictive tools often point to the same old patterns, making it likely for policing to replicate old mistakes or biases such as targeting of people of lower socio-economic status," said HRW.
"This throws into doubt whether the use of these predictive tools adds much new and whether they are either a necessary or proportionate intrusion on the rights of individuals," they further added.
