As if being a bud driver wasn’t depressing enough, Chinese Bus Drivers have even more issues to deal with. In a bizarrely oppressive move, public drivers are being forced to wear emotion-detecting bracelets to work.
Chinese bus drivers have their emotions recorded
Reported by South China Morning Post, state-run Beijing Public Transport Holding Group is adding emotion-detecting bracelets to employee uniforms. The bracelet will be used to monitor drivers during and after their shifts.
The bracelets reportedly monitor a number of vital signs. These include heart rate, blood oxygen level, sleep stats and their emotional states across the day.
At the time or writing, around 1,800 Chinese bus drivers are wearing the bracelets. This is part of a new psychology-tracking initiative with plans to introduce “5,000” recognition systems to track “abnormal behaviour” from citizens.
There’s not currently any information on what the information coming from these bracelets will be used for. However, judging from the country’s already oppressive technologies in place, it’ll likely contribute to the user’s social credit score.
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How detection technology changes social credit
The emotion-detecting bracelets worn by Chinese bus drivers are far from the only items oppressing citizens of the region. The country also has other mass surveillance tools including constant CCTV that tracks civilians and assigns them a traffic light-esque colour depending on behaviour.
These technologies are then used calculate a citizen’s social credit score. Citizens with high social credit are able to access government services quicker. On the other hand, those with low scores have rights taken away from them. For example, they cannot access public services such as transport.
As time goes on, even more oppressive technologies are being introduced in China to back this idea. Services such as Midnight Patrol are even being introduced to children in order to make them grow up with strict routines and a focus on work.
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