[photopress:IT_shenzen_view.jpg,full,alignright]At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed in Shenzen with sophisticated computer software to scan for crime. Much is being made of this in the American press as being a new form of people control in China. Manchester in Britain, to take but one example, has more police surveillance cameras than are planned for Shenzen. It is a sad fact of life that a lot of crime occurs on streets. It is an encouraging fact of life that police surveillance cameras reduce that crime rate dramatically.
Some civil rights activists contend that the cameras in China and Britain are a violation of the right of privacy contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
You may consider it an intrusion on privacy — it is — but it is not unique to China. Far from it. China is still a beginner in this area. (Incidental note: the popularity of the garment known as a hoody amongst the young is because the hood can be worn to defeat the cameras. You thought it was just a fashion statement?)
The next step is ID cards fitted with chips. Britain has been debating this for some time as has Australia. Basically, the reason why it has not started is not because of privacy issues but because the hardware and software needed to make it work is not yet foolproof. Even when the information contained on the card is simple and relatively easy to program in.
So Shenzen it is not setting a world trend, when starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, it will issue residency cards fitted with computer chips containing data.
The difference lies in the extent of this data. It will contain work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. That is far more information on the card than most other places considered desirable and, indeed, there is talk of it becoming a credit card for minor purchases.
This may turn out to be the step too far.
The company behind it is reassuringly called China Public Security Technology but the company is incorporated in Florida and raised most of the money to develop its technology in Texas.
Robin Huang, the chief operating officer of China Public Security said, ‘We have a very good relationship with U.S. companies like I.B.M., Cisco, H.P., Dell. All of these U.S. companies work with us to build our system together.’
The question is: will the system work? And the probability is that it will not.
It sounds like a computer sales executive’s dream but the difficulties in making such a system operate without falling over are immense. Any consultant or analyst who has been involved in such proceedings will agree that the programming and technical problems involved are several magnitudes more difficult than, say, a banking system. And that throwing more programmers at it will not help solve the problem.
Source: New York Times