Electronic surveillance

Chinese Surveillance Is Literally Getting in Workers’ Heads

Feel like your boss is a bit of a micromanager, always looking over your shoulder? Be grateful that they’re not peering into your brain.

That’s now the case for a number of workers in China, the nation competing for the global superlative of Most Dystopian.

An “emotional surveillance” system is allowing supervisors to scrutinize employees’ brainwaves for signs of distress, according to a report from the South China Morning Post (SCMP). The technology is the result of a government-backed project.

Here’s how it works. Lightweight sensors embedded in workers’ hats or helmets wirelessly transmit the wearer’s brainwave data to a computer — it probably works a bit like an electroencephalogram (EEG), as MIT Tech Review notes. Then, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms scan the data, looking for outliers that could indicate anxiety or rage.

Some organizations use the sensors during routine work, while others embed them in virtual reality (VR) headsets to monitor workers’ emotions during training exercises.

We don’t know exactly how many workers have been subjected to this surveillance system, but the SCMP article does say the technology is being deployed “on an unprecedented scale” in China.