Surveillance in Hong Kong is expected to intensify, with tens of thousands of new cameras and AI facial recognition software in the coming years, the city’s security chief said on Friday.
A network of approximately 4,000 closed circuit television cameras already scans Hong Kong, which is part of a program to combat police crime. And the city already uses artificial intelligence to monitor crowds and read license plates.
As part of the new city plan, the number of cameras will increase to 60,000 by 2028, according to documents subject to the Legislative Assembly. And AI technology “will naturally be applied to people, such as monitoring a criminal suspect,” Hong Kong’s security chief Chris Tang said to legislators.
The exact moment of these upgrades is not clear, and Tang has said that the authorities are still considering problems such as the technology to be used and how to allocate resources. The South China Morning Post reported in July that the police could start using facial recognition in real time at the end of this year.
Police said the surveillance network has helped speed up arrests and resolve cases. Critics say that such networks allow the government to invade confidentiality and target dissidents – and that false matches can cause unjustified arrests.
The increase in surveillance reflects similar efforts in continental Chinese cities. Regions like the northwest region of Xinjiang, which houses ethnic Uighurs, have experienced even tighter surveillance.
Surveillance has been a flash point in Hong Kong for years. In 2019, the demonstrators damaged some of the “smart lancers” of the camera who had been newly installed. In 2023, the police said that the cameras should be installed in classrooms to improve security, which, according to criticism, would allow the government to monitor the content of teaching teachers and students’ conversations.
The digital life of Hong Kong residents is also more aggressively monitored, according to RFA Mandarin Reporting of March.
Includes France-Press agency reports.