The Beijing Police Have an Electronic Map That Shows Where You Live

I know where you live.

What if Google Maps allowed you to click on any building that you saw to access personal information about the residents living inside? That would be terrifying. I don’t think Google’s planning to add that feature anytime soon, but the Beijing police have been building their own version of just such a map since last fall, and it’s 87.7 percent done.

The idea behind the map is that it will allow the police and other government departments to more easily access database information about who lives where. If you live in China, the police already know where you live, so that’s not much of a change, but I’m not sure why every other government department needs access to that information. Moreover, given that a major State-owned telecom just suffered a massive security breach, is a super-convenient map based database of personal information going to be safe when numerous government departments all have access to it?

These are the sorts of questions that might be debated elsewhere, but this is China, so the map already exists. Chances are, if you live in Beijing, you’re probably already on it — even you, foreigners; it’s got 95,000 foreigners on the map already — so I suppose it’s time to look on the bright side. The map might allow authorities to improve systems like public transportation by giving them an easy visual representation of relative population density in different areas of the city.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a story from the Beijing police without a list of numbers, so here you go. Since its inception, the map has been used to…

• …eliminate 1,903 public security problems.
• …discover 306 clues about criminals.
• …crack 339 cases.
• …detain 256 suspects.
• …arrest 595 criminals.
• …capture 36 fugitives.

The report also notes that crime is down 9.9 percent compared to last year across the city, although it’s not clear what that has to do with this shiny new map.

[Beijing Youth Daily via Sina Tech, Image Source]