Read on Twitter
Talk about mission creep: #China's covid health tracking systems are close to becoming permanent. Chinese city wants to use green, yellow, red QR codes in scheme to single out unhealthy people. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-plan-to-make-permanent-health-tracking-on-smartphones-stirs-concern-11590422497
Chinese city wants to collate health records, physical exam results, and even lifestyle habits such as smoking and drinking to give it resident a health score between 0-100, and different shades of yellow, red, green.
Your health score and color code changes daily. Alcoholics and smokers beware. Here’s how it works: if you walk 15,000 steps in a day, your health score rises by 5 PRD. Have plans to grab a post-work drink with colleagues? A 200 ml of Baijiu marks you down 1.5 pts. #surveillance
3/ there’s also the idea to use such scores to assess health levels of clusters of people: corporations, neighborhoods, apartment blocks, according to Hangzhou health authorities, after they announced the news in a meeting on Friday.
4/ To recap, these colored QR codes were introduced in Hangzhou in February to faciliate people's return to work. Authorities assessed your recent travel history and health condition to assign you a rating on whether you were allowed to move about or not. https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-turns-to-health-rating-apps-to-control-movements-during-coronavirus-outbreak-11582046508?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=16
5/ Since Saturday, there's growing criticism on Weibo, China's Twitter. Some described it as #BlackMirror". One widely retweeted post reads, "Once power is unleashed, it’s difficult to retract. Once we give up our rights under special circumstances, it’s hard to get them back."
6/ Here's an early look at how people might respond to too much data collection during a coronavirus: (mostly facial data tracked) @samschech @RolfeWinkler @FoxCahn @Fredomatikus A survey done by state-linked Chinese agencies: https://attachment.baai.ac.cn/share/aies/facial-recognition-and-public-health-en-2020-05-17.pdf
There's been calls for China to put in some checks and balances on covid data collection and surveillance. Baidu's CEO Robin Li called for this at the ongoing Chinese parliament meetings. He's asked for authorities to set a plan to regulate and wind down such data collection.
China knows data protection is an issue: Li Zhanshu, a top Chinese legislator said Monday at the NPC meetings that China goal is to push ahead with a personal data protection law this year. According to Xinhua, a draft is already done.
