Crime
Where did the laws come from?
According to the movie, it seems that the Wandering Earth Act governs over almost every aspect of life. Although the movie does not list out the laws entirely, it may bear similarity to the Criminal Law of People's Republic of China, which governs most aspect of life regarding crimes [1].
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Unfortunately, although the movie is full of computing technologies and crimes, many of the crime scenes are simply not addressed and computing devices are simply not employed in preventing these forms of crimes.
Forms of Crimes
Most of the crimes committed did not get punished. The only crimes punished are the ones regarding stealing the vehicle pass and lending out property from the Union Earth Government. As the movie takes place in an imminent apocalypse context, it makes sense that the laws become weakened as people are attempting to run for their lives, or run for a rescue.
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Modifying public database and adding in new entries to the database of who can leave the underground city. The crime is not punished as it has never been caught, or has been resolved after the earth escaped from the jupiter.​
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Illegal modification of the program of the planetary engines, and repurposing it to have the flames shoot higher​
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Destruction of computing devices for personal benefits: destroying MOSS with vodka, destruction of the virtual skies
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​Killing the mother by stopping treatment is an illegal action in modern days China. China prohibits any form of Euthanasia.
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​Stealing the vehicle pass has been punished in a proper way.
Computing Technology vs Crime
Some of the crimes committed in this movie could have been prevented or addressed via computing technologies. Although the movie fails to demonstrate so, it is a direction that countries could move toward.
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The card theft bears similarities to how one can pickpocket another person for his keys to the car, and use the keys to start the engine. However, Saifullah et al. proposed an idea of using facial recognition for unlocking the vehicle, which could be more reliable than using a simple card for unlocking the vehicle [2].
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Still, some aspect in the movie have been enhanced with computing technologies to make crime less possible, such as the scene where Liu Qi completes a payment using digitalized money. In fact, China has already been planning on digitalizing money with a new digital currency that has the same functionality as paper money [3]. By doing so, not only does it prevent theft, it also prevent forms of crime such as forged cash. The ability to locate vehicles and people through an access system also allows police enforcers to track down criminals more efficiently, if they are inside a vehicle, or finding missing person, especially missing children or missing elderly.
Overall, most of the crimes regarding computing devices are not addressed correclty. However, with how advanced the technologies are, it is possible to prevent or halt certain forms of crime by making it impossible to commit, or harder to escape from the authority. Future society safety can be ensured through this way as well.
[1]PRC, Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, (Amended 1997), https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/cgvienna/eng/dbtyw/jdwt/crimelaw/t209043.htm, (Retrieved May 05, 2020)
[2] S. Saifullah et al., Keyless car entry through face recognition using FPGA, (IEEE, December 03, 2010), 2010 International Conference on Future Information Technology and Management Engineering, pp. 224-227, doi: 10.1109/FITME.2010.5654862, (Retrieved May 05, 2020)
[3] Helen Davidson, China starts major trial of state-run digital currency , (The Guardian, April 28, 2020) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/china-starts-major-trial-of-state-run-digital-currency, (Retrieved May 05, 2020)
