Once we pointed out the feeds from ECU, they admitted they also could access the public security cameras. But why the system also feeds into the intelligence agency raises the same concerns that human rights advocates raise in China. These cameras are easier to abuse than use. It just depends what your goals are. In effect, China is exporting more than cameras. They are exporting the way they use their cameras.
And while other countries also offer systems, including the U. So this actually, fundamentally undermines democracy. Now they have access to technology, undreamt of even 20 years ago. And China seems willing to give them cheap loans to buy it. And like in Ecuador, the infrastructure for autocracy stays even as leaders come and go.
It gives them a potent way to track criminals as well as online malcontents , sympathizers of the protest movement in Hong Kong , critics of police themselves and other undesirables. Our lives are worth about as much as dirt. The police arrived one day in April to a dingy apartment complex in Zhengzhou, an industrial city in central China. Over three days they installed four cameras and two small white boxes at the gates of the complex, which hosts cheap hotels and fly-by-night businesses.
Once activated, the system began to sniff for personal data. The boxes — phone scanners called IMSI catchers and widely used in the West — collected identification codes from mobile phones. The cameras recorded faces. On the back end, the system attempted to tie the data together, an examination of its underlying database showed.
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If a face and a phone appeared at the same place and time, the system grew more confident they belonged to the same person. Over four days in April, the boxes identified more than 67, phones. The cameras captured more than 23, images, from which about 8, unique faces were derived. Combining the disparate data sets, the system matched about 3, phones with faces, with varying degrees of confidence. Mobile device information and surveillance images captured in Zhengzhou in April This single system is part of a citywide surveillance network encompassing license plates, phone numbers, faces and social media information, according to a Zhengzhou Public Security Bureau database.
Other Chinese cities are copying Zhengzhou. Since , government procurement documents and official reports show that police in the Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Zhejiang and Henan have bought similar systems. Police in Zigong, a midsize city in Sichuan Province, bought sets of the technology, the documents show.
The system connects the two. Tracking people so closely once required cooperation from uncooperative institutions in Beijing. The state-run phone companies, for example, are often reluctant to share sensitive or lucrative data with local authorities, said people with knowledge of the system. Now local police are buying their own trackers. Improved technology helps them share it up the chain of command, to the central Ministry of Public Security in Beijing, the people said.
The surveillance networks fulfill a longtime goal of ensuring social stability, dating to the Tiananmen Square uprising but given added urgency by the Arab Spring in and In recent years, Chinese police made use of fears of unrest to win more power and resources. It is not clear how well police are using their new capabilities, or just how effective they might be.
But the potential is there. In Zhengzhou, police can use software to create lists of people. They can create virtual alarms for when a person approaches a particular location. They can get updates on people every hour or every day. They can monitor whom those people have met with, especially if both people are on a blacklist for some kind of infraction, from committing a crime to skipping a debt payment. These networks could help China hone technologies like facial recognition.
Cameras and software often have trouble recognizing faces shot at an angle , for example. Combined with phone and identity data, matches become easier to make, and the technology behind identifying faces gets better. Police are not hiding their surveillance push. Even the perception of overwhelming surveillance can deter criminals and dissidents alike.
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At the complex in Zhengzhou, residents were unfazed when told that the cameras and boxes were part of a sophisticated surveillance system. The building manager, Liang Jianzheng, said it meant he no longer had to help the police fight crime. Liang said. In November, after The Times asked surveillance companies about the system, a construction crew appeared and took down the cameras and boxes, Mr.
Residents would now need to scan their faces to enter their buildings. We did some work to persuade them, and in the end most people agreed.
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Data from the Shijiachi complex was parked on an unprotected server. For those who used the facial-recognition cameras to enter and exit, it also stored a detailed account of their comings and goings. Nearby networks were similarly unprotected. They held data from 31 residences in the area, with details on 8, people.
A car-tracking system near Shijiachi showed records for 3, cars and personal information about their owners. Across China, unprotected databases hold information on students and teachers in schools, on online activity in internet cafes and on hotel stays and travel records.
Online data leakage is a major problem in China. Local media reports describe how people with access to the data sell private details to fraudsters, suspicious spouses and anyone else, sometimes for just a few dollars per person. Leaks have become severe enough that police created their own company that handles data directly, skirting third-party systems. Companies with police connections use faces from ID cards to train facial-recognition systems.
The card system also tracks fingerprints, faces, ethnicity and age. A technology contractor called Shenfenbao, for example, had access to real-time records of every person staying in some 1, hotels in the southern city of Xiamen. Lin, who added that his company also offered algorithms to flag women who check into multiple hotels in one night for suspicion of prostitution.
Signs of a backlash are brewing. In Shanghai, residents pushed back against a police plan to install facial-recognition cameras in a building complex. In Zhejiang Province, a professor filed a lawsuit against a zoo after it required mandatory facial-recognition scans for its members to get access. In the Shijiachi residential complex, where the facial recognition replaced key card locks, the rebellion has been powered by wire and plywood.
On a brisk day in November, the doors of a number of buildings had been propped open with crude doorstops, making facial scans unnecessary. Terry Jin, a two-year resident of Shijiachi, said technology should not cross some lines. Jin said. Agnes Ouyang was heading to work in Shenzhen last year when two police officers told her she had jaywalked and would need to show them her identity card.
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When she refused, she said, they grabbed her roughly and used a phone to snap a photo of her face. Ouyang said. High-tech surveillance is reshaping Chinese life in ways small and profound. The Communist Party has long ruled supreme, and the country lacks a strong court system or other checks against government overreach. But outside the realm of politics, Chinese life could be freewheeling and chaotic thanks to lax enforcement or indifferent officials. Those days may be coming to an end. In the realms of consumer safety and the environment, that could make life better.
But it has given police new powers to control the people. Chinese police now boast that facial-recognition systems regularly catch crooks. At a tourist island in the picturesque port city of Xiamen, authorities say they use facial recognition to catch unlicensed tour guides. Shanghai police have begun using helmets with a camera embedded in the front. Databases and procurement documents also show they search out the mentally ill, people with a history of drug use or government gadflies. Some new claims are outlandish, such as software that claims to read emotion and criminal intent from a face.
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