China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People:

At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China [Shenzhen] and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

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.

First, I need not comment on the depravity of the funding of this technology by an American company. An extra level of hell should be built for Americans who enable repressive governments to violate rights.

Second, how long before Tom Tancredo and company impose such measures on American citizens and legal residents in order to prevent illegal aliens from access to the “goods” of American life–not just government benefits, but also honestly-sought jobs, schooling, medical care, consumer goods, and the like? Today’s worthless Republicans aren’t concerned to do what’s actually required about the problem of illegal immigration, namely (1) to reduce entitlements to zero for citizens and non-citizens alike and (2) to make legal residency possible for any law-abiding foreigner willing and able to support himself. They’ll just impose more regulations and restrictions. Mind you, our restrictive immigration policies are a great help to terrorists intending to do harm within the United States. Law enforcement is overwhelmed with the search for mere illegals seeking work. Finely-tuned smuggling operations into the country become profitably “businesses.”

Third, why is China’s “one child” policy so often described as “controversial” rather than, say, “oppressive.” Is it due to some sympathy for population control programs?