According to the good book, Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 3, states, “Before examining the splinter in my eye, first remove the rafter from your own”.
So it goes with privacy. Could it be that many who are quite vocal about their concerns for their privacy following the installation of surveillance cameras on a universal level might also be those who do not think twice about screenshotting a private conversation in WeChat and forwarding it to all and sundry?
No matter our feelings, being under almost constant surveillance is something we need to get used to, if indeed we are not already there.
It is estimated that there are now approximately 400 million surveillance cameras installed in China, although that is a number very hard to pin down and one that is likely seriously underestimated and escalating rapidly.
The cameras monitor everything from traffic, pedestrians and public buildings to environments hostile to humans and even schools.
Pro-consumer comparison website, Comparitech, had a look at the number of public CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) cameras in 120 cities worldwide and it is perhaps not surprising that fully eight out of the top ten most-surveilled cities are in China. Based on the number of cameras per thousand people, it was the western municipality of Chongqing that came in top of the list, with over 2.5 million cameras, or 168 cameras per thousand people in the urban area (over 15 million people; the total population of the municipality is nearer 35 million).
Nanjing is nowhere to be seen on the list of 120 cities, although this may be down to problems with data collection; the other seven in China are Shenzhen (#2), Shanghai (#3), Tianjin (#4), Ji’nan (#5), Wuhan (#7) and Guangzhou (#8) and Beijing (#9). The two cities in the the top ten that are not Chinese are London, UK (#6) and Atlanta, USA (#10).
But Do We Care?
Privacy is not a big deal in China, as a visit to any local hospital shows all too well, while Chinese people have been quite used to be being monitored by the state for decades; long before the existence of CCTV there were plenty of other methods.
Going back 30 years, it was common for Public Security Bureau officers to trail persons of interest, including foreigners. Apart from anything else, much like Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison, proposed in 1791, in which all the prisoners on each floor could view each other at any time, so too, by sheer weight of numbers, it is pretty hard in today’s China to do something without anyone else noticing.
We may care, but for different reasons than the conspiracy theorists would have us believe. For there are still plenty examples of the increase in surveillance failing to deliver. In aiming to fulfil the Ministry’s of Education’s “smart campuses” program, Betty Li’s university in Xi’an deployed facial recognition technology to identify her and her classmates doing all manner of things, providing them with access to their dormitory, for example. However, as the website TechinAsia points out, Li says, “The ‘smart’ facial recognition system cannot recognise her if she wears different glasses, and there are long queues to get through the door to her dormitory”.
Yes, sometimes we just want it to work. There are also the many that believe that not only are such systems unreliable at best, much of the data gathered can be untrustworthy and the uses to which it can be put rather limited.
Then there is the whole raison d’etre for the cameras in the first place. The aforementioned Comparitech survey also found virtually no link between increased surveillance and both crime reduction and perceptions of safety.
- You are Under Surveillance; Nanjing’s Upgraded CCTV Cameras
- Saving Face; the Art of Surveillance
- Is Jaywalking “Shame TV” Working for Nanjing?
Yet, it remains true that human performance is altered not by the fact that they are being monitored, but by the fact that they think they are. Exhibit A in this case in China is the satellite navigation system that points out the speed limit and that there are cameras in operation nearby. Everyone obeys. In places without the cameras, or pointedly, without the navigation system’s warnings, speeding and illegal turns are the norm. That the cameras may also not be working is irrelevant.
Exhibit B is also from the automobile world. Many drivers today use apps or other devices to monitor their driving and send reports to their insurance company, that in turn rewards them with cheaper premiums for safer, law-abiding driving. Business media, Fast Company, reports, “The trend of some drivers adding bumper stickers to their cars, informing fellow road users that they’re not driving slowly on purpose, but rather that they’re only doing it for cheaper insurance”.
Suddenly, those drivers are not bothered by the intrusion into their privacy. After all, both privacy and freedom are now paid-for services; the freedom to drive fast and collect speeding tickets, together with the privacy afforded by a monthly VPN subscription.
The proliferation of China’s surveillance cameras may yet cause their own backfire. Some reports will have us believe that in the next year or 2, the number of cameras will reach one for every two people, or 6-700 million.
That will be monitor and the monitored, then. Certainly, China has huge resources at hand to put into public security, but half the population?
Perhaps the AI will get it right. Nanjing’s latest generation of traffic cameras are ultra high definition, meaning they can identify drivers as a vehicle speeds underneath, a development which also put to an end a cottage T-shirt industry that sold the garments with a painted-on seat belt.
It also remains difficult to see how that many cameras could be deployed without them making their way into public toilets and our homes. And it is certainly incredulous that think that we may all end up as Winston in George Orwell’s “1984”, hiding around the corner in his apartment’s alcove, away from the all seeing state’s “telescreen”, so that he could write his diary.
The reality is that we lost most of our privacy a long time ago, around the time when the telephone was invented. Back then we thought only us and the person we were talking to knew about the call.
No, the telephone company knew too.
