CCTV face recognition camera makes life more convenient in some areas of our daily lives. You can open your door by looking at the camera, enter into your school, pay bills in shopping malls, and cross the airport boarding gate without showing passport using facial recognition system. CCTV Camera will add another feather to the cap of achievements by facial recognition system.
Some countries like China, USA, India use this technology to reorganize the whole surveillance system. Here we will talk about the adoption of CCTV face recognition by the top countries of this world.
- China’s Domination
In China, the government is building a powerful and effective CCTV face recognition network. As of 2017, there are about 170 million CCTV cameras installed around the country and they have a plan to buy more than 400 million CCTV cameras by 2020. These cameras are useful to scan the public for age, ethnicity, gender and other detail tracing by scanning only the face.
This technology helps the Chinese police by tracking peoples’ movements, their friends and even sometimes tries to predict crime. The cameras are also used to find jaywalkers, fugitives and others.
It is being said that the technology is so fast that it can scan the entire Chinese population by only one second and the whole world’s population by only two seconds.
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For a test basis, they took just seven minutes to locate and capture a BBC reporter by using the vast network of CCTV based facial recognition technology.
Also, they have adopted sunglasses with built-in face recognition technology. It eliminates two drawbacks of CCTV system. First, CCTV images are blurry and secondly, when they address the suspect, he/she can already move from the crime scene. But, sunglass technology will allow them to address and capture them immediately.
The banks and financial companies that lead the Chinese economy, adopt face recognition technology to secure transaction processes. Airports are deploying face recognition technology for fast and secure boarding times. For smoother traveling experience, railway stations, hotels, banks and restaurants are also introducing this technology with customers.
China has a massive plan for AI to advance in the country with technology, facial recognition system is just a part of the full plan. For the first time in its history, China’s AI companies gained more investments than that of the US in 2017. They got almost half of the money of total investment in AI industry all over the world.
By 2020, they are going to build a ubiquitous, fully networked and controllable video and image analysis system across the country.
Though, everyone isn’t happy with these technologies, specially the people who are being watched every second of their life.
- US’s Determination
The United States is a formidable player who has been leading the technology world for a long period and still stands tight on the front row. They are not far behind China in CCTV face recognition system, even ahead of them, in some cases.
They have a higher per capita penetration rate than China with 62 million surveillance cameras when China has 172 million cameras in 2016, not to mention that China has few times more citizens than the U.S.
The police forces of United States have adopted face recognition technology for a long time. In 2014, Chicago police department identified the first criminal through face recognition technology and that person was sentenced to 22 years in prison for armed robbery.
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The FBI uses facial recognition technology to build Next Generation Identification System to compare images from crime scenes with a national database of mug shots. Moreover, LAPD lowered down the crime rate by using algorithm-based techniques to predict where crimes are likely to occur most at a given time.
Britain used a Japanese program called NeoFace Watch to spot a wanted man in a crowd in May.
- Dubai’s Dream
UAE has a mission “UAE Vision 2021” to make the country one of the best in the world. To be eligible to sit on the elite list, they are going to build smart cities with all scientific revolutions.
The authorities of Dubai have implemented thousands of CCTV cameras of various Dubai government agencies and will now provide live updates to a central command center.
This program will have a centralized command center that will get the update from all cameras and identify the suspects with the help of AI and CCTV face recognition technology.
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Major-General Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, Assistant Commander-in-Chief for Criminal Investigation Affairs, named this project as ‘Oyoon’ that means “eyes”, hopes that it will prevent crimes in the city and reduce road accident and congestion. He expressed that,
“Dubai is changing, and we must be prepared for the new changes. The project was launched by the Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police to tackle crimes and reduce traffic accidents. Government and private sectors will participate in securing the emirate,”
- India
Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is going to adopt facial recognition technology for hands-free access to public transport. The civic body is determined to build a smart-city and this deployment will take it one step ahead to advance the project. They are already going to install around 7,000 CCTV cameras to bring the city under proper security surveillance.
- Russia
Russia has adopted CCTV face recognition technology across the Moscow city. The system integrates with the 160,000 CCTV camera network of Moscow to cover the entrances to 95 percent of the city’s apartment buildings. Due to the steep cost of this technology, only a few thousand cameras are active at a time. The authorities of this city are currently working with NTechLabs to reduce the costs and expand the coverage.
- Germany
Germany also steps ahead to test CCTV facial recognition technology in 2017. They have launched a new face recognition surveillance system for test basis at Berlin’s Südkreuz train station. Amid concerns against this technology, the German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere commented that,
“Video surveillance makes an important contribution [to the police effort] as it serves as a deterrent against crime and helps to investigate offenses,”
- Georgia
Georgia, the country besides Russia and Turkey, has also showed faith in face detection CCTV camera technology for surveillance. With the help of NEC Corporation, 400 CCTV cameras were already installed throughout the major cities in Georgia under the directive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. Also, tens of thousands more CCTV face recognition surveillance cameras will be added in the near future.
- UK
Similar CCTV facial recognition system is being used in UK too to monitor the people’s activities closely. A report says that Brit cops have acquired a database of 19 million photos by CCTV cameras, which is almost 30% of the total British population.
- Australia
South Australian police department has adopted CCTV face recognition technology to identify persons of interest and missing persons. This facial-recognition technology allows police to compare images of suspects from CCTV footage against the national offender databases. This project is also run by NEC Corporation.
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It is also reported that the new Optus Stadium in Perth could be deployed facial recognition based CCTV cameras for the visitors to fight with the terrorists.
- New Zealand
The police department of New Zealand is going to upgrade their system by using face recognition technology through the CCTV network. With the help of CCTV camera and face recognition technology, there would hardly be any place to hide for the criminals.
Conclusion
Granted, CCTV face recognition system will be the ultimate nightmare for criminals, the sheer amount of concerns against this system in almost every country also brings some debate on the table about the usability of this system. It shouldn’t be used to violate the citizens’ rights in anyway by monitoring every moment of their personal lives.
We hope that the technology will help law enforcement agencies more and more by bringing out new technologies and at the same time protecting the citizens’ privacy.
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