Recently, there was a piece in The New York Times on Chinese plans to track people in Shenzhen.
At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity...
When a police officer goes indoors and cannot receive a global positioning signal from satellites overhead, the system tracks the location of the officer’s cellphone, based on the three nearest cellphone towers. Mr. Huang used a real-time connection to local police dispatchers’ computers to show a detailed computer map of a Shenzhen district and the precise location of each of the 92 patrolling officers, represented by caricatures of officers in blue uniforms and the routes they had traveled in the last hour.
So who might be providing those 20,000 cameras and the software behind them? A bit of digging around revealed that NEC already has cameras in Shenzhen.
On July 19, electronics giant NEC announced it has developed the world’s first automated border control system that uses facial recognition technology capable of identifying people inside their automobiles. The system is already in operation at checkpoints on the Hong Kong - Shenzhen border.
Built around NEC’s NeoFace biometric face recognition system, as well as NEC’s electronic passport technology, the system is designed to boost the speed and efficiency of Hong Kong Immigration Department operations by allowing residents with microchipped national ID cards to remain in their vehicles while automated cameras verify their identities. Hong Kong residents aged 11 or over are required by law to carry a national ID card (HKID), and the recently issued “smart” IDs are embedded with chips that contain biometric and personal data.
This seems to line up with China Public Security Technology, Inc.'s press release from May 1.
China Public Security Technology, Inc., (OTC Bulletin Board: CPBY.OB - News; "China Public Security" or "the Company"), a leading provider of large-scale high-tech public security information technology and a Geographic Information Systems ("GIS") software service operator in China, today announced that it has completed performance of its contract for automation of the Sha Tau Kok Station of Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection in Shenzhen City, China.
Admittedly, they're not the only possible game for facial recognition in town, and suppliers could change.
No comments:
Post a Comment