Hong Kong plans big AI-powered surveillance boost

[ad_1] Surveillance in Hong Kong is about to accentuate, with tens of hundreds of latest cameras and AI facial-recognition software program deployed within the coming years, the town’s safety chief mentioned Friday.

An internet of round 4,000 closed-circuit tv cameras already scans Hong Kong, a part of a police crime-fighting program. And the town already makes use of synthetic intelligence to observe crowds and browse license plates.

Beneath the town’s new plan, the variety of cameras will balloon to 60,000 by 2028, in accordance with paperwork submitted to the legislature. And AI expertise “will naturally be utilized to folks, equivalent to monitoring a prison suspect,” Hong Kong safety chief Chris Tang advised lawmakers.

The precise timing of those upgrades is unclear, and Tang mentioned that authorities are nonetheless contemplating points equivalent to which expertise to make use of and the way to allocate assets. The South China Morning Put up reported in July that police might start utilizing real-time facial recognition as early as the tip of this 12 months.

Police say the surveillance community has helped to hasten arrests and resolve instances. Critics say such networks permit the federal government to invade privateness and goal dissidents — and that false matches can result in wrongful arrests.

The rise in surveillance mirrors related efforts in mainland Chinese language cities. Areas just like the northwest Xinjiang area, dwelling to ethnic Uyghurs, have skilled even tighter surveillance.

Surveillance has been a flashpoint in Hong Kong for years. In 2019, protesters broken a number of the camera-bedecked “good lampposts” that had been newly put in. In 2023, police mentioned cameras ought to be put in in lecture rooms to reinforce security, which critics mentioned would permit the federal government to observe the content material of trainer instruction and scholar conversations.