In China, Big Brother is watching you, and in Beijing he just got more eyes to improve his vision. According to a May 25 report by state-run Beijing News, the capital’s police forces installed 30,000 new security cameras, ostensibly to crack down on criminal activity.
The new system, building upon hundreds of thousands of cameras already in place, is intended to form a “solid prevention and control network,” according to the Beijing Public Security Bureau.
By 2010, Beijing authorities already had more than 400,000 cameras providing “one hundred percent coverage” of major public areas, traffic arteries, and strategic positions, as as well as 70 percent of residential zones, state-run media reported previously.
Cameras that come in the newest installment have three levels of surveillance— 24 hours coverage of essential districts, busy streets, schools, business centers, etc., and timed surveillance over minor streets, the Beijing News report says.
“The surveillance videos in the past were simply tasked with recording evidence, but now we can actively identify and fight against illegal activities,” the city Public Security Bureau said in a statement.
The communist regime has long used public surveillance to monitor and crackdown on activists and civil groups seen by the Party as subversive. As the 26th anniversary of the June 4th Tiananmen Square protests and massacre approaches, the upgraded security network in Beijing seems to serve a pointedly authoritarian function.
