Expansive facial recognition surveillance coming to Hong Kong, Bahrain, South Africa

The use of facial recognition technology for law enforcement has proven controversial, but not enough to deter authorities around the globe from implementing new FRT schemes to tighten security and fight crime.

HK police install 2,000 CCTV cameras, look to add 1000s more

The South China Morning Post reports that in Hong Kong, the Commissioner of Police is promising to draft guidelines for the use of personal information collected by a soon-to-be-installed network of 2,000 CCTV cameras. Commissioner Raymond Siu Chak-yee says the use of facial recognition will not be ruled out for a subset of cases that is still being defined, but that “citizens do not have to worry,” because the police will use the technology lawfully.

In Siu’s view, the 2,000 cameras to be installed in 2024 are insufficient for surveillance in a place as densely populated as Hong Kong. He anticipates many more will be added, pointing to as a comparison to Singapore, which has 90,000 operational CCTV cameras.