In the Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in... Vancouver, more than 60 surveillance cameras watch 30 tables and send feeds to China. The cameras, manager Ryan Pan explains, are there to "people track" and are "part of the social credit system in China."
In 2014, China's State Council issued guidelines for the establishment of a national "social credit system" by 2020, with the feeds from about 626 million surveillance cameras and smartphone scanners and with data from a multitude of sources ... For example, criticizing Chinese ruler Xi Jinping would result in the lowering of an individual's score. There are consequences for low-scored individuals.
Why did Beijing select Ryan Pan's restaurant for such intensive collection of information? For starters, it is near to the home rented by Huawei Technologies for staff attending to Meng Wanzhou, the firm's chief financial officer. Meng is in the middle of a multi-year struggle to avoid extradition to the U.S. for alleged bank fraud relating to sanctions evasion, and she is allowed to stay in one of her homes. Beijing, therefore, wants to know what people around her are saying and doing.
In addition to posing a crucial national security risk, the secretive transmission of video to China is a violation of British Columbia law, specifically, the province's Personal Information Protection Act.
Beijing will, at some point, be able to assign a social credit score to just about everyone on the planet.... it is just a matter of time before they succeed.
China's Communist Party wants to know everything that happens everywhere on the planet. So far, the Western democracies do not seem to be putting up much of a fight.
In the Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in the Kitsilano district of Vancouver, Canada (pictured), more than 60 surveillance cameras watch 30 tables and send feeds to China. The cameras, manager Ryan Pan explained to Scott McGregor and Ina Mitchell, are there to "people track" and are "part of the social credit system in China." (Image source: Ina Mitchell)
China is surreptitiously collecting, for use in its domestic social credit system, video from a popular eatery in Canada.
In the Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in the Kitsilano district of Vancouver, more than 60 surveillance cameras watch 30 tables and send feeds to China. The cameras, manager Ryan Pan explained to Scott McGregor and Ina Mitchell, are there to "people track" and are "part of the social credit system in China."
This restaurant is corporate-owned, one of two Haidilao locations in that port city in British Columbia. There are more than 935 of the chain's restaurants worldwide with over 36 million VIP members. The business started in China's Sichuan province.
Why do we care? Beijing is evidently extending its totalitarian controls to the rest of the world.
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