Title: In China, Beware: A Camera May Be Watching You : NPR
Headings: In China, Beware: A Camera May Be Watching You
Asia
In China, Beware: A Camera May Be Watching You
Life Under Surveillance
Cameras Everywhere
Some Feel Safer, Many Feel Dread
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Content: "The greatest fear is the state uses its surveillance and technology to curtail the modest freedoms that Chinese enjoy today," says Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. Bequelin says the Communist Party's ultimate goal is highly accurate, facial-recognition technology that would allow the government to visually track critics in real time. "That would be a game changer," he says, one that could "prevent the emergence of any challenge to the party in the short and long term." China already uses facial recognition in places like immigration checkpoints. Bo Zhang, who follows China's surveillance camera market for IMS Research, says facial recognition is much less effective on the street, where lighting varies. "Frankly, the technology is not as good as described in the movies," he says. " It's not that easy to find people in crowds." And, Zhang says, the government still has to knit together the country's disparate surveillance networks into one, all-seeing eye. As elsewhere, surveillance has many positive uses in China. Shanghai police say video cameras helped them catch more than 6,000 suspects in 2010, but they declined to discuss those successes with NPR.