As soon as this month Shenzen, China plans on putting up 20,000+ police surveillance cameras. An American-financed company designed the sophisticated computer software to recognize the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.
Shenzhen already has 170,000 outdoor and indoor closed-circuit television cameras owned by government and businesses agencies, According to China Public Security, the police will have the right to link them on request into the same system as the 20,000 police cameras.
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The first cameras will go up in a port neighborhood and then begin spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.
Data on the chip will include the citizen’s name and address and also work history, religion, ethnicity, educational background, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Surprisingly even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied and they may add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
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The Chinese government has commanded large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue technology loaded residency cards to 140 million people who have moved into a new city but not yet acquired permanent residency.
