China home to most surveilled cities worldwide: Report
DHARAMSALA 27 July: When it comes to the most surveilled cities in the world, China is home to a staggering 18 out of 20 of them.
“The urban population of China are under the heaviest closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance in the world,” WION, reported citing an annual report published by the UK-based Comparitech.
Comparitech, a firm that reviews technology services like VPN, anti-virus and apps has stated that there are 770 million CCTV surveillance cameras in use worldwide of which China alone employs 54% of them, the report stated.
London, the capital of the UK and England and Hyderabad, the capital of southern India’s Telangana state are the other two cities in the list.
While the former is ranked third, the latter stands at the 16th position of the 20 most monitored cities in the world.
China is reported to have used localised CCTV to stop people leaving their homes during the COVIS-19 lockdown.
Meanwhile, “China had one camera introduced for every 4.1 individuals in 2018,” the report said citing IHS Markit, a London–based global information provider and added that “China would introduce 567 million cameras by 2021.”
Taiyuan, the capital and largest city of Shanxi province of China was the most surveilled cities in the world. It was reported that there are 119.57 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people in the Chinese city.
Meanwhile, China’s communist regime is known to use a range of surveillance technologies including retina scans, DNA databases and facial recognition technology among others to monitor its citizens.
