In China, is Big Brother everywhere? Not quite yet, report says

Name: China’s facial recognition technology identifies people wearing masks amid the Covid-19 epidemic
Uploaded: 2020-11-09T16:15:17.000Z
Duration: 59 s
Description: China’s facial recognition technology identifies people wearing masks amid the Covid-19 epidemic

Local and central governments have spent billions of yuan building camera surveillance networks but it’s not an all-seeing system, researchers say

The technology is not linked nationwide but it may be just a matter of time, they say

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China’s surveillance system does not yet add up to an all-seeing network, researchers say. Photo: AP

Holly Chik

Published: 12:15am, 10 Nov 2020Updated: 9:42am, 10 Nov 2020

Chinese authorities have ramped up spending on surveillance technology in the last decade or so but the system remains highly fragmented, according to ChinaFile, a US-based online magazine.

Researchers examined about 76,000 surveillance technology procurement notices issued since 2004 and found that central and local governments in China spent more than 14 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) in the last five years on the nationwide surveillance campaign “Sharp Eyes” alone.

The number of notices for surveillance-related equipment and services rose by almost 19-fold between 2010 and 2019 as part of efforts to cover key parts of the country.

With at least 200 million cameras installed, China leads the world in terms of the number of surveillance cameras, according to a report published last year by computer security site PreciseSecurity.

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China’s facial recognition technology identifies people wearing masks amid the Covid-19 epidemic

But the authors of the ChinaFile – published by the Asia Society’s Centre on US-China Relations – said the cameras did not form a blanket surveillance network.