China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

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Hi-tech tool tracks city graffiti

US cities are battling the problem of vandalism head on with a hi-tech system that analyses and tracks graffiti and its perpetrators.

In the US, cleaning up graffiti is estimated to cost about $10bn (£5bn) per year. Rather than simply obliterate the graffiti, the system keeps a permanent record of it which allows police to compile a database of similar daubings.

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China won't scrap blog registry

New rules by a Chinese government-backed Internet group maintain strict controls over the country's bloggers, requiring them to register with their real names and identification cards
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The guidelines from the Internet Society of China (http://www.isc.org.cn), a group made up of China's major Internet companies, contradict state media reports this week claiming that China was considering loosening registration requirements for bloggers to allow anonymous online journaling.

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