China is definitely upping its game when it comes to state surveillance. The country has been outfitting its police officers with smart glasses that offers facial recognition technology and their use of facial recognition has also led to arrest of wanted suspects. Now it seems that come July, China will start tagging cars on its roads with RFID.
According to the report from The Wall Street Journal (via Engadget), the good news is that existing cars and car owners won’t have to tag their cars straightaway. However all new cars will have to have these RFID tags installed on them, which in turn will allow the government to keep track of the locations of all the cars in the country.
During the car’s registration, a system will log details such as the license plates, the color of the vehicle, and so on. There will also be roadside readers installed that will be able to detect the RFID tags on the cars as they drive by, which then sends the information to the Ministry of Public Security.
The use of RFID makes the tracking of vehicles more reliable compared to using security cameras which typically attempt to track the car’s license plates. Also due to China’s smog problem, it makes it hard for security cameras to track license plates due to the poor visibility. China claims that this move will help increase security and also potentially help reduce congestion, although it’s hard to ignore the fact that this means that the government can keep tabs on you at all times.