A drone flying over cars trying to enter Shenzhen, China, February 11, 2020. – NEW CHINA / SIPA
- Has China just invented electronic tolling by drone, in the midst of a coronavirus epidemic?
- This is what suggests a viral video, showing a drone equipped with a QR code, which would allow motorists to pay the toll without leaving their vehicle to avoid any potential spread.
- Drones are well used at certain highway checkpoints in southern China as part of the “Covid-19” epidemic, but they are not used to settle the toll.
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Clearly visible above the rows of cars slowly advancing one after the other, a drone advances in the opposite direction before coming to a stop in the air. Enough near motorists so that they can clearly distinguish the imposing QR code – a type of barcode to be scanned with their smartphone to display linked content – affixed to the device, while a voice, in loudspeaker , repeat the same instructions repeatedly.
If the scene looks like an anticipation film, it would have actually been filmed in China, in full epidemic of
coronavirus, according to the legend of this video viewed more than 24,000 times on this single tweet: “A drone with a QR code is deployed so that drivers pay the toll from inside their car with their phone to avoid the spread of coronaviruses. “
??? – A drone with a QR code is deployed so that drivers pay the toll from inside their car with their phone to avoid the spread of #coronavirus.#China # Covid19 #Wuhan #CoronavirusOutbreak pic.twitter.com/lAiBv97TJx
– Anonymous Citizen (@AnonymousCitizen) February 11, 2020
The virality of the sequence is however far from being limited to this single message, since it is also very widely disseminated in parallel by English-speaking Internet users on Facebook and on Twitter – some explaining having received it. “Friends in China”.
FAKE OFF
If it is difficult to go back to the original source of the video, it was found as early as February 10 in a tweet (much less shared) in Chinese, which denounced the “control” exercised by the Chinese Communist Party through this use of a drone with a QR code.
不得不 承认 中共 利用 科技 手段 管 控 社会, 做到 了 极致. pic.twitter.com/Gw4Jofi5wK
– 野山 (@naochashu) February 10, 2020
The province of Guangdong, in the south of China, has well set up such a system in recent days, not to allow motorists to pay tolls without physical contact with them, but by measure of containment of the epidemic, as reported by the Xinhua news agency.
A series of photos taken on February 11 by this organ of the Chinese Communist Party indeed shows the same type of drone flying over cars arriving near a toll booth, with a QR code calling to participate in “the prevention of epidemics” for ” your safety and that of others. “
“A police officer uses a drone carrying a panel with a QR code near a highway toll station in Shenzhen […] February 11, 2020, specifies the text accompanying this Facebook post. To help prevent and control the new coronavirus, an online registration system for vehicles returning to Shenzhen has been in operation since February 8. “
A registration form for visitors to Guangdong
The implementation of this compulsory registration system for visitors to the province took place on February 3 with a clear goal, as indicated an article from China Daily published the same day: “Allow drivers to check in before their passage in the province [de Guangdong] via the highway. ” The daily also specified that the persons concerned should indicate there “the state of health of all the passengers” and specify whether they had recently visited Hubei province, of which Wuhan – considered to be the center of the epidemic – capital city.
On the Xinhua website, a more detailed legend of the same photos taken on February 11 specifies that the specific use of the drone with QR code is supposed to “streamline” this procedure and allow motorists to register by “minimizing contact with others” in one of the 19 checkpoints deployed on the highway network of the province of more than 110 million inhabitants – still untouched by the deaths due to the “Covid-19” at this stage, although 683 people were contaminated there.
As 20 minutes was able to verify it, scanning this QR code with the WeChat application – very popular in China – opens a
Registration Form requiring you to provide their phone number and verification code.
This use of drones in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic is far from being a first for the Chinese authorities, since the devices are also used to take the temperature of residents directly on their balcony or
to call to order people who don’t wear masks, as shown by various videos posted in recent weeks.
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