In Xinjiang, Chinese police are using the blood and faces of an oppressed minority to craft dystopian technologies that may not even work. For years, they’ve been publishing their findings in respected international journals. W/ @suilee nytimes.com/2019/12/03/bus…
@suilee It sounds like science fiction, but it isn’t. The idea is to use DNA to recreate what faces look like. Basically scientists work to isolate how genes express themselves in facial structure. This chart sort of helps conceptualize it. 
@suilee The implications for surveillance are dark. So are the collection methods to develop the science. One paper published by Chinese police in a Springer Nature journal, used face scans and blood samples taken from 612 Uighurs in the remote town of Tumxuk, Xinjiang.
@suilee The sampling took place in 2018, coinciding with the nastiest period of the crackdown on Uighurs in Xinjiang. The samples were overwhelmingly taken from young men. While the scientists say consent was granted, journal editors never saw the forms.
@suilee The editors explained that as is customary in scientific studies, an ethics committee from the scientists’ home institution signed off on consent. That meant the same Ministry of Public Security that helped lock up a million Uighurs was trusted to vouch for study's ethics.
@suilee Then we went to Tumxuk. We were met at the airport by police. Minders controlled our movements as tightly as I’ve seen in Xinjiang. Streets were empty. Everyone was nervous. It was obvious it wasn't a great place to get consent for a genetics study.
To give a feel, here’s video of wreckage of a Uighur community in Tumxuk. Satellite images show it was leveled in 2019. Such destruction is everywhere in XJ, but this is as bad as I’ve seen. The rubble went on for a kilometer. At the end of the road was a turnoff for a camp.
I took the videos out of the cab and immediately hid them. Later police forced us to delete all videos from Tumxuk. In the footage you can see while poles where surveillance cameras would normally go. After they destroyed the houses, they took the cameras but left the poles.
Here’s a shot and satellite images of the re-education camp that was nearby the village. A second camp on the south side of the city had a popular propaganda refrain sculpted into the bushes: “Remain true to the original aspirations, keep the mission firmly in mind.”
Given the conditions, ethicists said consent would be impossible, especially for police researchers. Imagine it, your relatives disappear, your village is destroyed, and then police ask if you want to take part in a study. Who would risk saying no? (photo: empty Tumxuk streets)
For police, Tumxuk is great. It's off the beaten path even for Xinjiang. They recently opened a new DNA lab in town. Procurement documents show it uses tech from Thermo Fisher. The US firm pledged to stop sales in XJ, but the damage is already done, purchases were made before.
What does this get police? The science slowly advances surveillance tech. It may take a while, but eventually DNA could maybe map faces in a usable way. Another direction of research, using faces to map out DNA profiles. Just as likely, it gets misused to unfairly target Uighurs.
All of this is in the distant future. But Chinese police are preparing. Their guinea pigs are the people Beijing has focused most heavily on controlling, the Uighurs. These are the initial signs of huge mandatory biometric harvesting many Uighurs who have escaped have mentioned.
While western scientific institutions have at times aided the push, they are starting to pay attention. The Max Planck Society and Springer Nature told us they are reviewing their links to such work. Others will hopefully follow. (Photo: Uighur women sit by an informant’s box)
