China to use surveillance and face recognition to stop activists at Olympics
07 August, 2008
category: Biometrics, Government
Under Beijing’s seven year, $6.5 billion program called the Grand Beijing Safeguard Sphere, the Chinese government has installed roughly 300,000 video surveillance units around the city, according to a Los Angeles Times article. Included in that project and in conjunction with the video cameras, China has also deployed a face recognition technology in hopes of catching unwanted visitors at the Olympics in Beijing this summer.
The software is not able to read a quickly moving face, but Chinese officials are hopeful that it soon will be able to identify individuals out of a moving crowd. While China does have legitimate concerns over watching for Chinese critics and activists as a recent attack killed 16 police officers, Western security experts fear that China is pushing the envelope.
In addition to video surveillance, there are reports of the Chinese Government monitoring and controlling internet access, monitoring hotels and taxis, and employing ordinary citizens as snoops for suspicious behavior.
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