Last week brought an extraordinary demonstration of the dangers of operating a surveillance state — especially a shabby one, as China’s apparently is. An unsecured database exposed millions of records of Chinese Muslims being tracked via facial recognition — an ugly trifecta of prejudice, bureaucracy and incompetence.
WHY IT MATTERS: China is using facial recognition to monitor its citizens, this is a well documented fact. Unfortunately, not all the steps required to protect this very private information are being taken, as evidenced by this article. This raises again the importance of security to be built into our every activities, especially those that involve government or security activities.