In September we reported on a Zhejiang school which was using controversial brainwave-monitoring headbands. Now the authorities have instructed the school to halt the experiment.

The headbands are produced by a US-based company, which claims they measure whether students are paying attention. However pictures and video of the children wearing the sinister-looking devices caused an online backlash, and the local education bureau intervened to forbid the practice.

Beside concern about the ethical issues, the effectiveness of the devices is questionable. The headbands use electroencephalogram (EEG) technology, the same technology that’s used in hospitals to monitor brainwaves. There is some evidence to suggest that EEG can indeed be used to measure emotional states, but outside a clinical environment, many factors such as sweat or even blinking can interfere with the accuracy of the readings.

The device’s inventor, Bicheng Han of Brainco, gave an interview to thepaper.cn in which he defended his creation. He pointed out that parents had signed an agreement for their children to use the headband, and that he had not sold the system to schools but donated them for testing. He added:

“The technology is similar to that of the sports bracelet,” and his company had merely “simplified the instrument and turned it into a headband.”

According to Han, the purpose of the headband is not monitoring but to train students’ concentration by providing “neural feedback.” However this does not tally with previous reports suggesting that parents were being sent the readouts from their children’s headbands.

Brainco plans to continue testing the devices. They are in use at exclusive US private school Cambridge School of Weston, but in what may be an interesting reflection on different attitudes to education, there they are part of a mindfulness program, with the goal of helping students reduce their focus by meditation.

Photo: en.people.cn

A video filmed by the Wall Street Journal of brain-monitoring technology in Chinese classrooms has raised new questions about the appropriate use of surveillance in education. But it’s a US company which produces the headbands used.

The video, which can be seen here, shows children in a Zhejiang primary school wearing the headbands, which use electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor their brainwaves. A light on their head supposedly indicates the extent to which they are paying attention, and data is sent to not only their teachers but to their parents.

The school and pupils report improved performance, but it does not appear that any blind tests have been done for comparison. It is well established that increased attention from teachers leads to better academic performance, and it is possible that simply believing that they are under scrutiny will lead students to work harder. Experts cast doubt on whether a simple headband can obtain reliable EEG data, and a journalist shown in the video wearing one is skeptical about whether it accurately reflects his attention levels.

Despite the lack of evidence for the technology’s effectiveness, the Boston-based company behind it has plans to extend its trials to the US, Mexico, Spain, and Brazil. BrainCo, as if its name was not sufficiently dystopian-sounding, has a promotional video on Youtube which, as thenextweb.com points out, bears more than a passing resemblance to something from Black Mirror (as well as a trailer for what appears to be the worst computer game ever written).

Leaving aside questions of whether it actually works, the technology is another alarming development in the encroachment on children’s privacy. We have previously reported on the Guizhou school which makes students wear uniforms fitted with microchips so they can be tracked, and the use of facial recognition technology to keep children out of internet cafes in Jiangxi. Another Zhejiang school is electronically tracking students’ faces to assess their emotions and attention levels.

All this is of course done in the name of keeping children safe and helping them to excel. However, it might reasonably be asked whether adding to the academic pressure on young people, and accustoming them to a world where even their thoughts are not private, is truly doing the best we can for them.

Photos: www.prnewswire.com, www.heglobeandmail.com, www.scmp.com

It’s easy to be blasé about China’s lax attitude to intellectual property (IP), when it’s just pirated DVDs and Lego rip-offs. But if your child’s image is used in advertising without your knowledge or consent, then it becomes very serious indeed.

That’s the situation faced by Beijing resident Elisabeth Koch, and perhaps what’s most shocking is that there’s a prestigious European brand involved: Caran d’Ache, the Swiss pencil makers.

“If it was some tiny Chinese company, I don’t think there’s very much you could do,” Koch told beijingkids, “but this is a big heritage Swiss company that goes back a hundred years, that prides themselves on quality.”

The image featured in a huge billboard poster, prominently displayed at The Place in CBD, but the first Koch knew about was when friends contacted her to tell her about it.

“I said, ‘could you send me pictures?’ because my daughter’s school has permission to use her picture, and I thought maybe it was advertising the school.”

Instead Koch recognized a photograph which had been taken in 2014, when her daughter was only 5 years old.

“She won an art award for her fantastic drawing, in a competition organized by Caran d’Ache,” Koch said. “The picture was taken at the event. I was sitting right next to her, and by no means did we give permission for them to use the photograph.”

The poster, Koch learned, had been up for five months, and she still does not know whether there were others.

“Immediately I jumped onto Linkedin,” she said, “because I found the award my daughter got, and it was signed by two CEOs: one is the CEO of Caran d’Ache Switzerland, and the other is the CEO of the Chinese partner company, called China Nobleness International. So I knew which names to look for, and the CEO in Switzerland took it seriously, and put us in touch with her Chinese counterpart.

“The very first thing I said was I just want to settle this amicably, but the Chinese CEO put us in touch with her brand director. We had two meetings, and the CEO never turned up at all. They admitted they had made a mistake, but the brand director just blamed the distributor.

“They did take down the poster after some time, and offered us a box of pencils and a ballet lesson. I thought, I don’t want my daughter anywhere near you and your classes, and your crayons, or whatever! Our lawyer said it’s a total joke. We called the CEO, but she said she didn’t have time, and we should talk to her lawyer. So now we have come to the stage where we have signed a contract with lawyers, and our lawyers are talking to their lawyers, and we’ll see what happens.”

We asked Koch what advice she had for other parents, to avoid similar exploitation.

“I’m not sure there’s much you can do,” she said. “I think they probably thought we’d left [China], because most foreigners do leave in that time span, but we’ve been here for 11 years. I just think they really don’t care.

“It’s not a picture of a bunch of kids, it’s just my daughter, just her face, and she was only little. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”

Photo: courtesy of Elisabeth Koch

There are three types of people in social media: people who are all business, people who share everything ten times a day, and people who are in between.  The anti-social, anti-sharing, and anti-media people don’t count.

People who are all business have a social media strategy and operate like corporations. They have multiple accounts, often creating fake Facebook accounts for themselves while keeping their personal one private and unsearchable.  They apply the same strategy to WeChat, creating one, two, maybe even three accounts. These days, you need to attach your WeChat to a phone number, so these are the people who walk around carrying three iPhone 6 pluses that look exactly the same. You probably never noticed that they have more than one phone.

People who share everything ten times a day? We all have at least one of such people in our friend circles (I hide their moments for the sake my sanity), but they’re the ones who post a good morning post, a photo of their coffee, a quote or song that inspired them on the way to work, a photo of their lunch with a location tag, a photo of their gym workout gear, photos of dinner with location and people tags, and don’t forget all the interesting links and articles they managed to find in between all their other posts. These people don’t usually filter their posts, but just post spontaneously when they feel like it. Later, they might regret their post and delete it, or change the privacy settings (not possible on WeChat, yet), so if you see something interesting, take a screenshot of it before it disappears!

The people who are in-between these two extremes are probably the most “normal”.  Being in between doesn’t mean you don’t post at all, or that you never post any promotional posts for your company or friends, it just means that you pace your posts or target specific people (who might actually be interested in what you’re sharing). What this means is that if you have kids, you would limit sharing a kid-post to everyone about once a week to everyone (public) or at least to the people who don’t have kids. You could, however, share more posts about your children to a specific group of people who you know have children as well, or family, or close friends.

You could do the same for work related posts, event related posts (only posting events that would interest a specific group of people), and personal commentaries (e.g., political opinions). You have to decide what criteria you use to categorize your contact list so that you can properly set your privacy settings, though, which is usually the most difficult part.

“Don’t Share Moments”

When I first began using WeChat, I didn’t set up tiered privacy settings. I lived in a black and white world where I had friends, and then I had people I didn’t really know (acquaintances). With my simple way of thinking, I thought I could just hide my moments from the people who were not my friends. Naturally, those people would then block me from seeing their moments (or just put me in a red group). Eventually, we would just delete one another because we never talked and had nothing to share with each other. Don’t be like I was. Never hide your moments unless you suspect the person adding you is a scammer or something. Sometimes, you think you’ll never see that person again, but just by occasionally seeing their updates you can get to know them better, realize you have mutual acquaintances, the same political beliefs, or share the a favorite restaurant.  You might comment when they need assistance, or have a question, and they might help you–and then, guess what? You’ll make a friend.

You should still have a different levels of privacy set up on WeChat, though. WeChat is a social networking platform, but just as you wouldn’t go about making friends with everyone the same way, you should also control how you’re presenting yourself on WeChat. It might take some trial and error, but here we show you the key ideas to get you started.

Step 1: What are tags?

Tags are a categorization tool that help you search for contacts in your list and allow you to send a message to an entire group, e.g., “work”.  However, for the purposes of this guide, a tag is a tool for managing privacy settings by grouping your contacts.  For example, you can create traffic light colors: “red”, “green”, “yellow” or you can create tags that are more straight-forward, such as “work safe”, “public”, or “classmates”.

You can give each contact as many labels as you want, but this will complicate your privacy settings as it will make it more difficult to prevent them from seeing things. My recommendation is to only give each contact one single tag to make it more manageable.

However, this method will cause most contacts to have more than one tag as no one fits well into a single box, which complicates your privacy settings.  Hence, I recommend categorizing your contacts another way, and using the tags for grouping for privacy instead.

Step 2: What tags shall I use?

“Traffic Light”

For beginners, I would recommend a system a friend told me about. He said that in addition to the separate work WeChat he has, he utilizes a tiered privacy system like a traffic light: red, yellow, green.

Red: “Stop and think before you post!”

The highest privacy where you only share things that you wouldn’t mind broadcasting publicly (like a blog). This is especially the case if you have public moments set up (where everyone can see your last 10 publicly shared moments). If you have to stop and consider who can see what you share, what consequences may come out of it, and whether someone will be offended–then you should choose red for high security. Tag people you barely want to share moments with as red.

Yellow: “Wait, and think about what you can post!”

A medium setting where you might share dinner outings or selected updates with your colleagues, for example. If you feel like sharing more with these people, but still don’t know them well enough, or feel comfortable enough, sharing everything with them, tag them as yellow.

Green: “Go for it!”

The most public setting where you share anything you feel like sharing, usually only open to people who are less “picky”. Tag your best friends as green!

Note: you might be tempted to post “green” content to “public” (untagged groups), but here’s two reasons why you shouldn’t:

1. Non-grouped content will go into your public moments, if enabled.
2. Sometimes WeChat will glitch and new contacts will not be tagged when you accept them, or your changes will not be saved immediately (especially with data), in which case they can see everything that you’ve shared in “green”.

Step 3: Decide who gets which tag

The key to grouping for privacy is consistency. Not only do you want acquaintances who are mutual friends to be in the same group (under the same tag), so that they will see the same set of moments, but you also want to share the right content to the right group, consistently. People will find out if you share more with certain friends and less with others. You’d be surprised how often someone will message someone else behind someone’s back with “did you see what she posted?!”…Don’t give them reason to talk.

In addition, it’s a good idea to have certain networks, such as a company network, under the same tag for the same reason.

Step 4: Remember to select a tagged group when posting on moments
It takes a while to make it habitual, but until you do, just delete moments that you forgot to privatize.

FAQ
How long does it take to change the privacy settings for all your WeChat contacts?
Depends on how many contacts you have.

Does every contact have to be tagged? Can’t some contacts just see everything?

No, and yes, but if you leave certain contacts untagged, then when you post, you have to remember to select exceptions (“Share with everyone except”) rather than inclusions (“Share with these groups”).

For example, if you have a significant other who is not in any of your groups, and then you share a photo taken at a work function with your work group (“yellow”), then your significant other won’t be able to see it. Instead, share to everyone except certain groups (select “red”, etc.), then just ensure that every single contact is tagged in a group.

What if I never feel like posting to my “red” group?

It’s understandable to wonder why you should ever post in this group, but people who never post, or only post a link once every few months, have obviously grouped others. If you have no moments, or very few moments, your contacts know what you’ve done and will either return the favor or end up deleting you (in other words, failed networking).  You want to share a good mixture of links, useful things, events, food, and maybe even family. Remember to post just often enough for them to remember you exist, but not so much that they tire of your updates and opt to hide your moments.

What if I change someone from yellow to red? Will they know?

When you change someone’s tag/group, it won’t affect past posts, but it will affect future posts. Your contact will not suddenly be unable to see something you had previously shared with them, but they will not be able to see new updates for that group. So, whether they notice they’ve changed levels depends on how well you manage what you share and how much they care.

Photos: Pixabay (ShonEjai), Pixabay (jjuni), Jessica Suotmaa

Internet cafes in Jiangxi have begun installing facial recognition technology to prevent underage children from using their services, according to China Daily.

China banned under-18s from using internet cafes in 2002, so customers are required to show ID. However, the law has been widely flouted, and two tragic incidents in recent years have drawn attention to the issue. In December 2014, a 17-year-old collapsed in an internet cafe at 3am and later died, while in October 2015 a 16-year-old died after spending seven hours at a computer when he should have been at school. Reports of the incidents leave it unclear as to what connection might have existed between internet use and the tragedies, although it is stated that the 17-year-old had earlier been drinking with friends.

Nor is it clear how the facial recognition technology will operate. No system yet developed can tell a person’s age from their face, so the images must be checked against a central database of children’s faces. Many parents will find this more sinister than the idea that a teenager might be using the internet in a public place.

The news reignites the debate about the balance between keeping our children safe and protecting their individual freedom. In the USA and the UK, some schools use fingerprint data as a payment system. Supporters of the practice argue that whole fingerprints are not stored, only points of comparison, and it’s better than children carrying cash or other means of payments which might be stolen by bullies. Opponents counter that fingerprints can be reconstructed from the data held, and that parents were very often not consulted before their children were fingerprinted. Nonetheless, the UK’s Information Commissioner has approved the practice, which is increasingly widespread.

In Hong Kong, on the other hand, the Privacy Commissioner intervened to ban fingerprinting when it was first introduced in 2006. “I considered the consent of the staff and pupils rather dubious, because primary school’s consent in law cannot be valid and there’s undue influence. If the school says, ‘give up your fingerprint’, there’s no way of negotiating,” Justice of the Peace Roderick Woo commented. “Also it’s not a good way to teach our children how to give privacy rights the consideration they deserve.”

Fingerprinting of course has unfortunate connotations of criminality, whereas all schools hold pictures of their pupils’ faces, without any protest from parents. Last year, two universities began using facial recognition technology to ensure students were turning up for classes, and not sending others to attend on their behalf. Complaints have mostly focused on how long it takes to register students using this system – up to 15 minutes for large classes.

Proposals that children should have microchips implanted under their skin at birth remain no more than conspiracy theories, publicity stunts, or April Fool’s jokes. However, the debate about how we keep our children safe, while still respecting their rights and privacy, rumbles on.

Photo: Maraparacc, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo courtesy of wikimedia commons

Chinese media reports that police in Shenzhen captured a woman selling a list containing the personal information of around 150,000 newborn babies on a busy overpass. What’s worse, the list included the phone numbers of the babies’ parents as well as information on the families’ residences, vehicle registration and other personal details.

Each set of personal family data was being hawked for anywhere between RMB 2 to 8 (and in some cases, even as low as 1 mao), and many area parents had reportedly been receiving “harassing” phone calls from maternity supply, medical and insurance companies.

Shenzhen isn’t the only city where this kind of activity is going on – illicit sales involving lists of personal data is big business across the country (witness the ridiculous amount of SMS spam you receive each day) – but what’s most alarming is that “newborn data lists” are being sold around Beijing as well, something to which I can personally attest.

Shortly after our daughter was born in 2008, my wife also started received numerous calls from “maternity supply, medical and insurance companies” soliciting their goods and services. It was clear that some despicable individual at the Peking Medical Union Hospital had pulled the exact same thing with our records – the calls literally started coming in even before our daughter was born. One morning we received three in a row as we were waiting in the hospital for a pre-natal checkup – it was enough to make me stand up and want to throttle the nearest staff member.

Such calls are usually nothing more than an annoyance and I like to think that nothing more will come of our personal information from that time having been leaked out – but as with all things related to babies and kids, there is something particularly infuriating about this lowdown, dirty practice. And now that we are getting ready to have our second I can guarantee that the calls will resume once we’ve been registered in "the system."

It’s tempting to pin the all blame on the people stealing and selling this information but the root of the problem lies in the unscrupulous hearts of the solicitors who support this black market. Unfortunately Chinese law has not kept up with this growing problem, which doesn’t just affect families with babies, as my father-in-law who frequently receives phone calls hawking pacemakers and blood thinner can attest.

Laws covering the processing of personal data are filled with ambiguities and the government has only just begun the process of drafting legislation. But even if such laws are passed in the relatively near future there’s still the age-old problem of enforceability and accountability. If authorities are serious about tackling the issue then a system of tangible rules and punishments should be established and consistently enforced, but all too often this is simply not the case – it seems that only after an embarrassing debacle or, much worse, a crisis or tragedy occurs, do real efforts get underway. Let’s hope this won’t turn out to be the case for the children and families involved in this case.