Big Brother is watching: Chinese city with 2.6m cameras is world's most heavily surveil... - 0 views
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The city’s surveillance system scans facial features of people on the streets from frames of video footage in real time, creating a virtual map of the face. It can then match this information against scanned faces of suspects in a police database. If there is a match that passes a preset threshold, typically 60% or higher, the system immediately notifies officers. Three days later the police captured the man, who eventually admitted that he was the suspect.
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media access control address of users’ smartphone devices, a request sent when a device is searching for a wifi connection, to track their travel journeys precisely. It was only after the media raised awareness of the project that TfL widely informed its passengers.
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Eight of the 10 most surveilled cities in the analysis are in China. London ranked sixth with 627,707 cameras covering 9 million residents and Atlanta, Georgia, came 10th with 7,800 cameras for 501,178 people.
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Many crimes committed in a certain area of Chongqing were committed by non-residents, so facial recognition cameras were seen as a way to combat this.
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But critics warn such widespread surveillance violates internationally guaranteed rights to privacy. To meet international privacy standards enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both collection and use of biometric data should be limited to people found to be involved in wrongdoing, and not broad populations who have no specific link to crime. Individuals should have the right to know what biometric data the government holds on them. China’s automated facial recognition systems violate those standards.
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“These systems are being developed and implemented without meaningful privacy protections against state surveillance. The depth, breadth and intrusiveness of the Chinese government’s mass surveillance on its citizens may be unprecedented in modern history.”
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With 2.58m cameras covering 15.35 million people – equal to one camera for every six residents – Chongqing has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world for its population, beating even Beijing, Shanghai and tech hub Shenzhen.
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“With the rise of things like facial recognition, that is why we need new legislation that decides what is in the public’s interest and the legal structure within which they can be used. We shouldn’t drift there by accident.”
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And part of that is building trust with the community based on good community information, not on Big Brother technology.”
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Since then, two more Californian cities, Oakland and Berkeley, have also passed bans on all government use of facial recognition technology. Somerville, Massachusetts, passed a similar law this summer.
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Some people support facial recognition on the basis that technology has always driven change and is a force for good if used responsibly and proportionately.
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Omanovic argues that live facial recognition fundamentally threatens free societies. “It might start with the monitoring of just a few thousand people but it definitely won’t end there,” says Omanovic. “Authorities need to permanently ban its roll out now before it’s too late.”
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“Singapore has plans to install 100,000 facial-recognition cameras on lampposts, Chicago police have asked for 30,000 more, and Moscow intends to have 174,000 by the end of this year.”