They can do that now. By ‘they’ I mean ‘those with money and de facto power,’ obviously, not specifically the heads of the PRC – but I mean Big Brother is being publicly implemented on a huge, huge scale. It’s called the Information Platform of Real-time Citizen Movement – which sounds like a good and reasonable platform.

Implementation is limited to Beijing at present – and by ‘limited’ I mean that only 20 million or so people are having their movements from computer to toilet and back again tracked 24/7, which smacks of half-assery to me.

Obviously the key here isn’t so much meant for monitoring individual citizens as keeping track of unusually large gatherings of people – like the ‘gatherings’ that’ve popped up in Egypt and Tunisia, as a random example.

Friday.

[SCMP]