China discovers that pollution makes it really hard to spy on people
Gasping for oxygen in the noxious air that so often enshrouds northern China is never pleasant. What really twists the knife is that the state media often refer to it simply as fog, not pollution, as though it came wafting in on a zephyr, and wasnt belched by a smokestack in Hebei.
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Well heres some vindication for anyone who ever found this annoying. The Chinese government has realized that whatever it is clogging the atmosphere, its rendering government surveillance cameras ineffective (paywall), reports the South China Morning Post. Since that compromises national security, the government has hired two teams of scientists to come up with a fix, says the newspaper. But one reason theyre flummoxed by their assignment is that the haze is not simply fog, says Yang Aiping, a digital imaging expert and leader of one of the teams.
http://qz.com/143660/china-discovers-that-pollution-makes-it-really-hard-to-spy-on-people/