漫步香港部分市区时抬头望向天际线，您极有可能会注意到一盏黑光闪烁、玻璃质地的监控摄像头，聚焦在拥挤的街道上。未来几年内这一场景将变得更为普遍：随着警方推进计划，在全城部署成千上万台摄像头以提升监控能力。尽管香港常被列为世界最安全的大都市之一，警察局表示新安装的摄像头对于打击犯罪是必要的，并且暗示了可能会配备高级的人工智能与面部识别技术。
此举措引发了关注。专家们对此深感忧虑，认为这将使香港逐步迈向中国大陆那种广泛的监视系统，预见到技术可能带来的压迫性风险。他们担心这一发展会让香港越来越类似于中国内地的监控体系。
据报，警方原计划今年安装2,000台新摄像头，并且每年可能还会增加更多。安全局长Chris Tang在接受当地媒体采访时曾透露，未来的摄像设备将具备面部识别功能，同时表示在将来可能会利用人工智能追捕嫌犯。然而，CNN获得的信息并未明确新摄像头是否具有面部识别能力，也未提及技术引入的时间表。
对于香港当前的监控系统规模，政府机构部署了逾54,500台公共闭路电视（CCTV）摄像头，每千人约有7个摄像头，大致与纽约持平，在全球领先城市中排名居中。但与此相比，伦敦的每千人拥有13台摄像头，香港远低于主要中国大陆城市的平均水平，后者平均每千人拥有近440台摄像头。
公众对可能采用类似中国式监控及执法方式感到不安，这在2019年席卷全城的抗议活动中尤为明显。示威者采取各种措施避免被识别，包括戴上口罩和眼镜，有时甚至直接破坏或遮盖监控摄像头，甚至连智能路灯杆也被拆除——该设施原本仅用于收集交通、天气与污染数据。
与大陆相比，香港拥有较为独立的法律体系及制度环境。自2019年反政府抗议后，北京施加了前所未有的全面国家安全立法以确保秩序，并声称这些法规在全球范围内都具有类似性质。专家指出，“这关键在于政治体制本身和‘党国’如何运用法治来维护其权力。”
随着新摄像头的部署，香港警方表示会遵循现有法律法规及严格内部准则管理，但具体细节并未详细说明。
然而，多名接受CNN采访的专家对已有法律能否适应新技术提出质疑。几十年前制定的香港法律规定存在大量宽泛豁免条款适用于警察行为，这可能不足以应对面部识别等新兴技术的应用。
伦敦大学SOAS中国研究所主任Steve Tsang警告称，如果监控摄像头应用于“严苛”的国家安全法之下，可能会被用作政治镇压手段。除非当局向公众保证这些设备不会用于此目的，否则香港的执法方式将更接近中国大陆模式的可能性增大。
专家对于面部识别技术如何在港实施表示谨慎态度。由于目前港府尚未详细阐述其应用计划和规则，这一问题仍然悬而未决。关于活体面部识别（持续监控环境）、何时应用至过往录像以及哪一方拥有授权使用权限等问题都还需明确答案。
无论面部识别具体如何应用，专家普遍认为摄像头的存在及其数量的增加可能会使香港市民在警方严密监视之下感到不自由。这种被监控的感受会影响人们的行为和对自由的感觉，“这体现出了一种与技术效果无关的国家强制。”
新闻来源：www.cnn.com
原文地址：Hong Kong plans to install thousands of surveillance cameras. Critics say it’s more proof the city is moving closer to China
新闻日期：2024-10-06
原文摘要：
Glance up while strolling through parts of downtown Hong Kong and, chances are, you’ll notice the glassy black lens of a surveillance camera trained on the city’s crowded streets. And that sight will become more common in the coming years, as the city’s police pursue an ambitious campaign to install thousands of cameras to elevate their surveillance capabilities. Though it consistently ranks among the world’s safest big cities, police in the Asian financial hub say the new cameras are needed to fight crime – and have raised the possibility of equipping them with powerful facial recognition and artificial intelligence tools. That’s sparked alarm among some experts who see it as taking Hong Kong one step closer to the pervasive surveillance systems of mainland China, warning of the technology’s repressive potential. Hong Kong police had previously set a target of installing 2,000 new surveillance cameras this year, and potentially more than that each subsequent year. The force plans to eventually introduce facial recognition to these cameras, security chief Chris Tang told local media in July – adding that police could use AI in the future to track down suspects. In a statement to CNN, the Hong Kong Police Force said it was studying how police in other countries use surveillance cameras, including how they use AI. But it’s not clear how many of the new cameras may have facial recognition capabilities, or whether there’s a timeline for when the tech will be introduced. Tang and the Hong Kong police have repeatedly pointed to other jurisdictions, including Western democracies, that also make wide use of surveillance cameras for law enforcement. For instance, Singapore has 90,000 cameras and the United Kingdom has more than seven million, Tang told local newspaper Sing Tao Daily in June. While some of those places, like the UK, have started using facial recognition cameras, experts say these early experiments have highlighted the need for careful regulation and privacy protections. Hong Kong police told CNN they would “comply with relevant laws” and follow strong internal guidelines – but haven’t elaborated in depth on what that would look like. And, some critics say, what sets Hong Kong apart from other places is its political environment – which has seen an ongoing crackdown on political dissent, as it draws closer to authoritarian mainland China. Following unprecedented and often violent anti-government protests that rocked the city in 2019, local and central authorities imposed sweeping national security laws that have been used to jail activists, journalists and political opponents, and target civil society groups and outspoken media outlets. Hong Kong’s leaders have said the laws are needed to restore stability after the protests in the nominally semi-autonomous city, and argue their legislation is similar to other national security laws around the world. “The difference is how the technology is being used,” said Samantha Hoffman, a nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research who has studied China’s use of technology for security and propaganda. Places like the United States and the UK may have problems with how they implement that technology, too – but “this is fundamentally different… It has to do specifically with the system of government, as well as the way that the party state… uses the law to maintain its own power,” said Hoffman. What this means for Hong Kong Hong Kong has more than 54,500 public CCTV cameras used by government bodies – about seven cameras per 1,000 people, according to an estimate by Comparitech, a UK-based technology research firm. That puts it about on par with New York City and still far behind London (13 per 1,000 people), but nowhere near mainland Chinese cities, which average about 440 cameras per 1,000 people. Fears of mainland-style surveillance and policing caused notable angst during the 2019 protests, which broadened to encompass many Hong Kongers’ fears that the central Chinese government would encroach on the city’s limited autonomy. Protesters on the streets covered their faces with masks and goggles to prevent identification, at times smashing or covering security cameras. At one point, they tore down a “smart” lamp post, even though Hong Kong authorities said it was only meant to collect data on traffic, weather and pollution. At the time, activist and student leader Joshua Wong – who is now in prison on charges related to his activism and national security – said, “Can the Hong Kong government ensure that they will never install facial recognition tactics into the smart lamp post? … They can’t promise it and they won’t because of the pressure from Beijing.” Across the border, the model of surveillance that protesters feared is ubiquitous – with China often celebrating the various achievements of its real-time facial recognition algorithms, and exporting surveillance technology to countries around the world. According to an analysis by Comparitec, eight of the top 10 most surveilled cities in the world per capita are in China, where facial recognition is an inescapable part of daily life – from the facial scans required to register a new phone number, to facial recognition gates in some subway stations. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government mandated a QR “health code” to track people’s health status, which in some places required facial scans. But the technology has also been used in more repressive ways. In the far-western region of Xinjiang, Beijing has used cameras to monitor members of the Muslim-majority Uyghur population. And when unprecedented nationwide protests broke out in late 2022 against the government’s strict Covid policies, police used facial recognition along with other sophisticated surveillance tools to track down protesters, The New York Times found. “(China’s) public security surveillance systems … tend to track lists of particular people, maybe people with a history of mental illness or participation in protests, and make a note of people who are marked as being troublesome in some way,” Hoffman said. The systems then “track those specific people across the city and across its surveillance network.” “I think it’s fair to anticipate that the use of CCTV and facial recognition technology in Hong Kong will begin to look a lot like those in mainland China over time,” she said. Hong Kong police have argued the cameras help fight crime, pointing to a pilot program earlier this year of 15 cameras installed in one district. Already, those cameras have provided evidence and clues for at least six crimes, Tang told Sing Tao Daily – and police will prioritize high-risk or high-crime areas for the remaining cameras. The first five months of this year saw 3% more crimes than the same period last year, Sing Tao reported. In their statement, police told CNN the new cameras would only monitor public places and delete footage after 31 days. They will follow existing personal data privacy laws, as well as “comprehensive and robust internal guidelines,” police said, without elaborating on what those guidelines entailed. When considering AI-equipped cameras, “the police will definitely comply with relevant laws,” the force added. But several experts interviewed by CNN cast doubt on whether those existing laws, written decades ago with broad exemptions for police, will be enough. Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, warned that the new cameras could be “used for political repression” if they are employed under the “draconian” national security law. Unless authorities assure the public that the cameras won’t be used for that purpose, “this is likely to be a further step in making Hong Kong law enforcement closer to how it is done on the Chinese mainland,” he said. How to regulate facial recognition Other experts argued it’s far too soon to say what the impact will be in Hong Kong, since authorities have not laid out in detail how they would use the technology. “Hong Kong law doesn’t, in all measures, mirror what happens in mainland China,” said Normann Witzleb, an associate professor in data protection and privacy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, But that’s why it’s all the more important for authorities to address a raft of yet-unanswered questions, he said. For instance, it remains unclear whether Hong Kong will deploy live facial recognition that constantly scans the environment, or whether the tech will only be applied to past footage when certain crimes occur or when legal authorization is granted. Witzleb also raised the question of who would have the power to authorize the use of facial recognition, and what situations may warrant it. Would it be used to prosecute crime and locate suspects, for example – or for other public safety measures like identifying missing people? And, Witzleb added, will police run the technology through their existing image databases, or use it more broadly with images held by other public authorities, or even publicly available imagery of anyone? “It’s important to design guidelines for those systems that take proper recognition of the potential benefits that they have, but that also acknowledge they’re not foolproof, and that they have the potential to interfere with (people’s) rights in serious ways,” Witzleb said. Regardless of how facial recognition might be used, both Hoffman and Witzleb said the presence of that technology and the increased number of security cameras may make Hong Kongers feel less free under the ever-watchful eye of the police. “When you feel like you’re being monitored, that affects your behavior and your feelings of freedom as well,” Hoffman said. “I think that there’s an element of state coercion that doesn’t need to have to do with the effectiveness of the technology itself.”
