Nikkei Asian Review August 11, 2020 13:00 J.S.T. International Relations | “Japan grows wary of China’s Smart-City global standards”. “Competition and national security concerns arise if Beijing takes the lead” By Hiroyuki Akiyama
Is being a digital citizen a "Smart Thing? " Calling George Orwell !!!
As it turns out China is first to propose far-reaching Smart-City Artificial Intelligence standards to ISO and IEC. Not to worry as Japan is aligned with America, France, Germany and Britain in these organizations and any proposal requires a super-majority two-thirds vote to gain acceptance.
As has been reported previously, China is using these systems, potientially with facial recognition, in Xinjing to track the Uighur Muslim Minority. When asked at check points, inhabitants must have their smart phone or documents which are tied to individual records containing photos, fingerprints, iris scans and even laboratory data from previous blood sampling.
Although the current proposals are not public, the Chinese proposals reportedly are about using these data and AI to track movements of individuals in the context of a public health emergency. To enter a public place, a shopping or transit center, one would make themselves known by presenting their smart phone. A health code could be revealed that ties the person to their assigned health risk code based on their travel and laboratory testing.
Reports suggest that China is developing more than 100 Smart Cities and is selling these same systems to governments in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. So far Japan and Western countries are using, to some extent, these technologies to “run urban centers in an energy-saving manner.”