Chinese sanitation workers have to wear location-tracking bracelets now
These Chinese sanitation workers have to wear
location-tracking bracelets now
Public pressure barely made a dent
By Sean Hollister Apr 6, 2019, 7:33pm EDT
China has quite the reputation for monitoring its
citizens, and it feels like various parts of the country are constantly
figuring out new ways to use gadgets to that end — RFID chips in cars, facial
recognition sunglasses, and location-tracking uniforms for students each made
headlines in the past year. Now, you can add sanitation workers with
GPS-equipped tracking bracelets to the list.
On April 3rd, news broke that sanitation workers in
Nanjing, China’s Hexi district were being required to wear GPS-tracking smart
bracelets to not only monitor their location at all times, but audibly prod
them if they stopped moving for more than 20 minutes.
Just one day later, the South China Morning Post reports,
public pressure had mounted to the point that the local sanitation company
decided to walk things back a bit — but only by removing the most obnoxious
part of the system. Now, the bracelets will no longer say “please continue
working” if a worker decides to stay in one place, but they’ll reportedly still
track workers just the same.
The original Jiangsu City Channel video report that
reportedly brought this to light (here, but Weibo login required) shows workers
are being tracked as pins on a map. Image: Jiangsu City Channel
It’s not clear whether that result will be enough to
satisfy the public, but I suppose it depends on how the news is presented to
them. Weirdly, the South China Morning Post’s headlines read “Workers freed
from monitoring after outcry” and “Chinese workers freed from Big Brother style
monitoring after public stink,” neither of which line up with the facts of its
own story.
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