Who Wants to Supply China’s Surveillance State? The West - Companies vie to revolutionize ‘Big Brother’ surveillance with AI
Who Wants to Supply China’s Surveillance State? The West
Companies vie to revolutionize ‘Big Brother’ surveillance
with AI to read your mood and trawl your life
By Dan Strumpf and Wenxin Fan Nov. 1, 2017 8:41 a.m. ET
SHENZHEN, China—U.S. tech giants and Chinese state-backed
companies showed off the future of policing in this southern technology hub as
they vie for a slice of the world’s biggest surveillance market.
Companies from across the globe packed one of the world’s
biggest surveillance trade shows to demonstrate the latest gizmos and
algorithms powering the high-tech revolution in the industry, of which China is
on the vanguard. Tools being hawked included facial-recognition cameras, iris
scanners, software that can read a subject’s mood and cameras that can scan license
plates in the dark.
The surveillance-equipment market in China was valued at
$6.4 billion last year, according to IHS Markit . China is a big buyer of
surveillance technology as Beijing steps up its efforts to better monitor its
1.4 billion people. That is providing a boon for equipment makers, who are
looking to export their gear abroad. But it has also sparked concern from
rights activists about how the authoritarian government is using the souped-up
“Big Brother” technology.
‘It can’t kill.
Just burns clothes.’
—Henan RongTai
Security Technology representative
Seagate Technology PLC, Qualcomm Inc. and United
Technologies Corp. were among the foreign companies to show their wares at the
16th China Public Security Expo, where prospective customers included Chinese
police, government officials and businesses.
“Ninety percent of the companies here have some kind of
facial-recognition products, and they all want to sell it to the police,” said
Jiang Jun, an executive of CloudWalk Technology Co., which is a two-year-old
startup from Chongqing.
A spinoff of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the company
counts police units in 23 provinces, as well as more than 50 banks, as
customers of its facial-recognition algorithm.
Qualcomm booked rooms at the nearby Ritz-Carlton hotel to
demonstrate its latest tech: not-yet-released tools that, when plugged into
security cameras, recognize not just faces but offer a judgment on the
subject’s demeanor, such as “calm” or “happy.” The technology was made in
partnership with Chinese facial-recognition pioneer SenseTime, the company
said.
“Internet of Things is just blowing up, and one of those
key areas is cameras,” said Danny Petkevich, product-management director for
Qualcomm’s connected-cameras business. “As we were looking at the areas of
growth, security cameras is obviously a big portion of that market.”
The Silicon Valley data-storage company Seagate—which had
its name splashed across the expo welcome banner—occupied one of the convention’s
largest display areas, where it unveiled a new hard drive for storing
surveillance footage.
At a standing-room-only booth hosted by Dahua Technology
Co., China’s second-largest maker of surveillance equipment, a live camera
projected the faces of passersby on the screens alongside text describing their
gender, age range and expression.
The demo wasn’t a hit with everyone: It described Peng
Xue, 27 years old, as “young” and “sad.”
“My first impression is this is an overexpose of my
information,” she said. “And it doesn’t seem to be right. I am actually happy.”
Meanwhile, a separate Dahua display was also estimating
subjects’ ages. But depending on the facial expression, the display spit out an
age range of 16 years—from 30 to 46—for a reporter from The Wall Street Journal
testing the technology.
Also on display by Dahua was a big-data platform that
enables the police to piece together a target’s social network by scooping up
information from China’s prolific personal-data records, from national
identification numbers and marriage records to Wi-Fi log-ins.
“This is already in use in Zhejiang,” Dahua’s home
province on China’s eastern coast, a company representative said.
Most products shared a common thread: a combination of
artificial intelligence, such as facial-recognition software, with increasingly
high-powered surveillance devices.
“The purpose to come here is to find innovation. You
realize how far behind Western countries are,” said Mark Raine, managing
director at CCTVdirect, a U.K.-based distributor of surveillance equipment. He
was watching a gadget demonstration by the Chinese appliance maker Haier Group.
“What starts here ends up in homes, airports and businesses back in America,”
he added.
Mr. Raine said the integration of artificial intelligence
is revolutionizing the surveillance industry. “The market is moving away from
recorded images,” he said. “Now, the computer tells you when something’s
wrong.”
At a nearby booth for DeepGlint Technology Ltd., the
Beijing-based software maker demonstrated an array of artificial-intelligence
offerings that it said it is selling to Chinese police. Among them: technology
that can sift through reams of surveillance footage to search for specific
colors, makes and models of vehicles.
“Say you want to know if a black bus has been in this
area,” said a DeepGlint representative while gesturing toward a screen showing
a congested highway. A series of black buses filled a screen. “We can just look
it up in the system.”
Another corridor of the convention center was filled with
high-powered surveillance drones. Nearby, Henan RongTai Security Technology Co.
was hosting a stand to show off laser rifles used for crowd control and for
disabling drones.
“It can’t kill,” a company representative said of the
Star Wars-like device resting on the table. “Just burns clothes.”
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