A couple videotaped kissing and hugging at a metro station is to sue the Shanghai Metro Co for allowing the video to be broadcast on the Internet, the Oriental Morning Post reported Monday.

The three-minute video of the couple in their 20s was shot in September and uploaded to Youtube.com and Ku6.com last week. Within two days, it received more than 15,000 hits, the newspaper said.

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The couple has decided to sue and a lawyer has been engaged. “This has to do with the protection of the legal rights of all passengers traveling on metro trains in Shanghai, and not simply our own interests and damage it has done to us,” the man said.

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Gao Fuping, a professor at East China University of Political Science and Law, said: “If it is proved the video was shot by metro company employees, they and the company, should take responsibility for the invasion of the commuters’ privacy.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hirsh does a decent job of laying out the plan in broad strokes, especially the state’s motivation to control migration and access to social services, but there are some errors, and the piece overall is likely to lead the average viewer to the erroneous conclusion that China’s project outclasses — on a technological level, not just sheer size and scope — ongoing surveillance developments in the US and England.

Hirsh sketches out the role that artificial intelligence can play in surveillance systems such as the focus on pre-crime, using sophisticated algorithms that could detect “protests about to form.” His suggestion, however, that China’s new system will be so advanced that it will know if “you take a different route to work” strains credibility. Facial recognition systems have consistently failed to meet expectations in pilot programs in the US over the past several years, such as in Tampa, Florida. Even relatively advanced facial recognition software has difficulty identifying people when their heads aren’t presented full frame. Tracking individual workers on their routes each day via face recognition would be a major technological achievement.

Still, it is clear that some things, like the deployment of a high-tech ID system for all citizens, are likely to be tested in China first. The US is planning its own high-tech ID system, Real ID, but there has been considerable resistance at the state level.

CBC news anchor: I have to think, though, this kind of system in place, would be coveted by other jurisdictions in other countries, so it ultimately may not be something that is just in existence in China.

Hirsh: Well and ironically even though its an ethnically Chinese company that’s behind this, they’re based in America and the funding is coming from American capital, so this is very much a beta-test for the rest of the world. … this automation makes it a lot easier for democratic countries, maybe they’ll configure it to be a little less totalitarian, but nonetheless this technology unfortunately will proliferate around the globe.

“A little less totalitarian.” Quote of the month.

When a private firm does not comply with a friendly request from the FBI for information regarding its customers, the government may follow-up with an NSL to compel the release of information. Created in the 1970s, NSLs were originally intended as narrow exemptions to consumer privacy law that would facilitate the prosecution of espionage and terrorism within US borders. NSLS have expanded dramatically in scope and importance in post 9/11 America. Recipients of national security letters are forbidden, in perpetuity, from disclosing the letters to any third party, including legal counsel.

The issuing of NSLs currently requires no judicial oversight. More than 60 FBI divisions have the authority to issue these letters. After September 11th, Attorney General Ashcroft rescinded a long-standing Justice Dept guideline which required agents to destroy records gathered on ordinary US citizens when related investigations were closed. Under Ashcroft’s new guidelines, the FBI “shall retain” all records it collects and “may disseminate” them freely among federal agencies. In other words, all information yielded to the government in the process of pursuing national security letters may now be stored by government databases indefinitely, changing long standing practice in which government agencies expunged data about innocent civilians when particular investigations for which they had been generated came to a close. With President Bush’s Executive Order 13388 access to this data was expanded from FBI units to state, local and tribal governments and to “appropriate private sector industries.” As you will learn in the video, this data is being stored in the FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), and is accessible to more than 10,000 government employees, as well as those private sector companies providing technical services and support.