No privacy infringement
Statistics show that Skynet has achieved huge successes since it was systematically deployed in 2011, helping decrease the overall crime rate in China.
In the first 8 months in 2016, police in Nanchang arrested 1,600 criminal suspects, solved nearly 3,000 cases and captured images of 90,000 vehicles that violated traffic regulations through the help of Skynet. In the three years since Skynet was deployed in Changsha, police solved over 17,000 cases using Skynet, including murders and robberies.
According to Xinhua, the crime rate for eight types of felonies including drug trafficking, robbery and intentional injury in China dropped 42.7 percent between 2012 to 2016. Over 90 percent of the Chinese population now say they feel safe.
SenseFace's facial recognition system is currently being used by public security authorities in Beijing, Chongqing and other provinces including Guangdong, Sichuan and Hainan, playing an important role in daily monitoring and solving crime cases.
Xu Li, CEO of the company, told thepaper.cn that when the system was first tested in Chongqing, it identified 69 criminal suspects in 40 days. Fifteen of these suspects were later arrested and detained by the police.
The system can also tell the difference between motor vehicles and non-motor vehicles and distinguish between 3800 car models with a 95 percent accuracy rate.
But as China's surveillance network becomes more powerful and all-seeing, some privacy advocates have been questioning whether the system will infringe on personal privacy.
Wang addressed this by saying that, according to Chinese law, public surveillance cameras should be clearly marked. It is also prohibited to install them in private places such as hotel rooms, dormitories or public restrooms.
"These regulations will safeguard people's rights and serve as the legal basis for Skynet," he said.
Lower tier, less cameras
Legal experts confirmed that it is completely legal for the police to use Skynet to collect footage.
Xue Jun, professor of law in Peking University, told China News Service that as the footage collected by Skynet are in public areas, people's privacy isn't infringed according to Chinese law.
Xu Kai, a Beijing-based lawyer, said that people's personal information is a right, but also an obligation. When required by law, they must hand everything in to the government.
"However, if this footage is used without authorization or used for purposes other than official crime investigations, there are possibilities of infringement," Xu said.
And while the scale of its surveillance network is the biggest in the world, compared with its massive population, China still lags behind developed countries in its deployment of surveillance cameras. For every 1,000 citizens in Beijing (China's most closely-monitored city), for example, there are 59 surveillance cameras, according to statistics released at the 2016 Beijing International Intelligent Hardware Exhibition. This means there is one surveillance camera for every 17 people in Beijing.
In China's second- and third-tier cities, however, the density of CCTV cameras is much lower, estimated at under one per 100 people on average.
In the UK, numbers are estimated at one camera per 14 people and in the U.S., one for every 10. The British Security Industry Authority estimated in 2013 that there are up to 5.9 million closed-circuit television cameras in the country, including 750,000 in "sensitive locations" such as schools, hospitals and care homes, according to the Telegraph.
Experts in the surveillance hardware industry predict more surveillance in the years to come. In 2015, China's video surveillance market was estimated at 74 billion yuan, with the market projected to grow 10 percent each year.
