The New York Times concluded this after a year-long investigation in which journalists analyzed 100,000 Chinese government documents. These documents dealt with the procurement of equipment for the surveillance system.
The documents show that the Chinese government is making extreme efforts to keep an eye on its citizens. Nationally and locally, administrators seem to strive for ‘maximum surveillance’. In addition to cameras on the street, Chinese people should also be monitored in the shop and in the catering industry, they believe. The police can also ask hotels for images.
Ambitions
The figures show that China takes its ambitions regarding this theme seriously. The Chinese government is estimated to have access to more than 500 million security cameras. And with that, the party has access to half of all security cameras worldwide. With the images from those cameras, self-learning algorithms are built that learn to recognize individuals. And the Chinese database is now huge: it would contain 2.5 billion photos of faces, with which the police want to ‘control and manage people’.
But the Chinese government continues to collect DNA, iris scans, telephones and voice recordings with special microphones with a range of 100 meters. For some time now you can also be fined in some places if you run through the red light. Cameras recognize who it is and you get a fine on the mat.