How a pandemic in China threatens to turn into an all-out video surveillance

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

By next year, China will have six times as many surveillance cameras as the United States. Moreover, we are talking not only about video monitoring in public places: the equipment is installed in front of the front doors of apartments and even inside the houses of residents of the Celestial Empire. How do the Chinese put up with surveillance, and what are they still not used to?

The morning after his return to Beijing, Ian Laiff found a camera in the hallway of his apartment building aimed directly at his door. The 34-year-old expat from Ireland has just returned from a trip to southern China and was required to comply with a two-week home quarantine imposed by the government as part of the fight against the spread of the coronavirus.

According to him, the camera was installed without his knowledge. “The camera right in front of your door is a blatant invasion of privacy,” says Laiff. "I doubt it's legal."

Despite the fact that there was no official announcement of the installation of cameras in front of the doors of quarantined people, reports of similar cases in some cities of China began to appear on social networks since February.

China currently does not have national legislation governing the use of surveillance cameras. Nevertheless, cameras have long become an integral part of everyday life: they observe people at pedestrian crossings, bus stops, in shopping malls, restaurants and even in school classrooms.

According to the state broadcaster CCTV, as of 2017, more than 20 million cameras have been installed throughout China. But other sources report much larger numbers. There are 349 million cameras in China as of 2018, according to a report by IHS Markit Technology, nearly five times the number of the United States.

According to British research firm Comparitech, eight of the ten cities in the world with the most cameras per thousand are in China.

And now, due to the coronavirus pandemic, cameras have moved from public places to the front doors of apartments, and in some cases - inside the home.

Evolution of strategy

Some time ago, China began to use a digital "health code" to track the movement of people and identify those who should be quarantined. The Chinese authorities have also resorted to technology to enforce the quarantine.

A street committee in Nanjing City in Jiangsu province announced on February 16 through its Weibo account (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter) that cameras were being installed in front of people's apartments to monitor residents' self-isolation around the clock, and explained that this move “has been able to reduce costs and to increase the effectiveness of anti-epidemic measures”. The government of Qian'an City in Hebei Province has also announced the use of cameras to monitor citizens in home quarantine through its website. And in the city of Changchun in Jilin province, according to the local government website, artificial intelligence cameras were installed on the streets to recognize the outlines of people.

As of February 8, state-owned telecom operator China Unicom has helped the local government install 238 cameras to monitor people in quarantine in Hangzhou city, according to the company's Weibo post.

Photos of cameras recently installed in front of their apartments were posted on Weibo by residents of Beijing, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Changzhou and other cities.

Some of them are not opposed to such measures, although it is not fully clear how severely critical comments are censored in the Chinese segment of the Internet. One Weibo user who went to home quarantine after returning to Beijing from Hubei province said authorities had warned her in advance to install a camera and alarm in front of her door. “I understand and fully support this decision,” she wrote. Another Beijing resident, who introduced himself as a lawyer, Chang Zhengzhong, considers the installation of cameras optional, but is willing to put up with it, "since this is a standard procedure."

Other citizens, concerned about the spread of the virus in their cities, have called on local authorities to install cameras to monitor compliance with the quarantine. Jason Lau, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University and a privacy expert, says Chinese people have long become accustomed to the ubiquitous surveillance cameras

“In China, people are convinced that the state already has access to any of their data. If they believe that certain measures will help keep their lives safe and are in the public interest, then they are not overly concerned about privacy,”he explains.

According to some people, the cameras were installed right in their apartments.

State official William Zhou returned to Changzhou, Jiangsu province from his home province of Anhui at the end of February. The next day, a communal worker, accompanied by a police officer, came to his house and installed a camera on the nightstand so that it was directed at the front door. According to Zhou, he didn't like it at all. He asked the utility worker what the camera would record, and he showed him the footage on his smartphone. “Standing in the living room, I was clearly in the frame,” says Zhou, who asked not to be identified by his real name for fear of repercussions.

Zhou was furious. He asked why the camera could not be installed outside, to which the policeman replied that vandals could damage it there. As a result, despite Zhou's protests, the camera remained in place.

That evening, Zhou called the City Hall and Epidemic Control Center hotlines to complain. Two days later, two civil servants came to him and asked him to understand the situation and cooperate. They also promised that the camera will only take static pictures and will not record audio and video.

But that wasn't enough for Zhou.

“Because of the camera, I tried not to use the phone, fearing that my conversations would be recorded. I couldn't stop worrying even when I closed the door and went to bed,”he says. According to Zhou, he would not mind a camera outside his apartment, as he had no intention of going out anyway. “But the camera inside my apartment is an interference with my private life,” the man says indignantly.

Two other people who are self-isolating in the same apartment complex with Zhou told him that cameras were also installed in their apartments. The Zhou County Epidemic Control Center confirmed to CNN staff that the cameras were being used to monitor quarantined citizens, but declined to provide further information.

A street committee in Nanjing city posted on Weibo photos showing how the authorities are using cameras to enforce quarantine. One of them shows a camera on a nightstand in the hallway. On the other - a screenshot of the recording from four cameras installed in people's apartments

The local government declined to comment. The Center for Epidemic Control said that the installation of surveillance cameras is not on the list of mandatory measures, but some county governments have decided to do it themselves.

How cameras work

There is no official record of cameras installed to monitor compliance with quarantine. But the government of Chaoyang County, part of the 4 million Jilin City, has installed 500 cameras as of February 8.

Elsewhere in the world, governments are using less intrusive technology to track the movements of their citizens. In Hong Kong, for example, everyone from overseas must quarantine for two weeks and wear an electronic wristband connected to a mobile app that notifies authorities if a person leaves their apartment or hotel room.

In South Korea, an application is used to locate people using GPS. And in Poland, they launched an app last month that allows people in quarantine to send selfies and thus inform the authorities that they are at home

Even in Beijing, not all home quarantines saw a cell outside their door. Two residents of the Chinese capital, who recently returned from Wuhan, reported that magnetic alarms were installed on the doors of their apartments.

Liff, an Irish expat living in Beijing, believes that the footage from a camera installed outside his apartment is being monitored by employees at his apartment complex, whose job it is to ensure that he does not leave his house and does not invite guests. "Their smartphones have an application that shows footage from all cameras," Laiff says, adding that he saw more than 30 doors of apartments in which "predominantly foreigners" live on the phone of one of the communal workers.

The power of communal workers

In China, each urban area is governed by a local district committee. This remnant of the era of Mao Zedong became the basis of the system of population control in the new China.

Officially, the district committees are independent bodies. In reality, they are the eyes and ears of local governments and help maintain stability by monitoring millions of citizens across the country and reporting suspicious activity.

When the epidemic broke out, communal workers were given broad powers to enforce home quarantine in residential complexes. Their responsibilities also began to include helping residents with food delivery and garbage removal.

Every time Lina Ali, a Scandinavian expat living in Guangzhou, opened the front door to get her groceries, a bright light came on on a camera outside her apartment. Employees of the company that owns her apartment complex installed the camera on the first day of her home quarantine, she said. “They said the camera was connected to the police station, so every time the lights came on, I got nervous,” she says. "In my own house, I felt like a prisoner."

In one district in Shenzhen, according to a report published on the official website of the local government, cameras used to monitor quarantined residents are connected to smartphones of police and utility workers. If someone violates the quarantine, "the police and community workers will be immediately notified."

Maya Wang, senior researcher for China at Human Rights Watch, says governments can apply a wide range of measures to protect populations during a pandemic and "it is not necessary to install surveillance cameras at every turn."

“The measures approved by the Chinese government to combat the spread of coronavirus are a system of total surveillance of the population, which was previously used only in certain regions, for example, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,” she says.

Legal status

China does not have national legislation governing the use of CCTV cameras in public places. In 2016, the Ministry of Public Security published its draft law on CCTV cameras, but it has not yet been passed by parliament. Some local governments have recently issued their own camera decrees.

According to Beijing-based lawyer Chong Zhongjin, from a legal point of view, the installation of cameras in front of apartment doors has always been in a "gray zone." “The territory outside the apartment does not belong to the owner of the apartment and is considered communal property. At the same time, the camera located there can film his private life, for example, how he leaves and returns home."

Complicating matters further, the cameras are installed by the authorities during a public health emergency, in which case privacy is less important than public safety, Chong adds.

On February 4, the PRC Cyberspace Administration issued a decree to all regional divisions "to actively use big data, including personal data, to ensure measures to prevent the epidemic."

The decree says that the collection of personal data should be limited to "key groups" - people who have been confirmed or suspected of the virus, as well as their loved ones, and this data should not be used for other purposes or made public without the consent of citizens. And organizations collecting personal data must take strict measures to prevent it from being stolen or leaked.

Jason Lau says that, under Chinese law, organizations that have the right to collect personal data related to public health emergencies include national and regional health authorities, medical institutions, disease control authorities, and local authorities. …

“Of course, the government will try to collect as much data as possible to prevent the spread of the virus,” he says. But the government must also decide how much data collection is necessary and whether there are other, less intrusive methods to achieve the same goal, he adds.

The beginning of a new era of digital surveillance?

In early April, more than a hundred human rights organizations issued a joint statement urging governments to ensure that digital surveillance of citizens during the pandemic is used without violating human rights.

“Measures taken by states to contain the spread of the virus should not become a cover for expanding surveillance of citizens,” the document says. - Technology should be used to disseminate useful health information and facilitate access to health services. Increasing government surveillance (for example, gaining access to geolocation data) threatens privacy, free speech and freedom of association. This can undermine the credibility of the authorities, and, consequently, reduce the effectiveness of government measures."

Fortunately, surveillance cameras will not stay in front of people's doors forever. Ali and Zhou said that after they served their mandatory quarantine, the cells were dismantled

Utility workers told Zhou that he could keep the camera for free. But he was so angry that he took a hammer and smashed it to smithereens right before their eyes.

“When surveillance cameras are installed in public places, it is normal, because they help prevent crime. But they have no place in people's homes, he says. "I feel uncomfortable with the idea that the government is invading our privacy and watching us."