Current Events > Singapore looking to add face-recognition surveillance to 110K lamp posts.

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Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

In the not too distant future, surveillance cameras sitting atop over 100,000 lampposts in Singapore could help authorities pick out and recognize faces in crowds across the island-state.

GovTech, the Singapore government agency in charge of a Lamppost-as-a-Platform pilot project scheduled to begin next year, has given companies until May to register their interest in providing technology for the network.

The plan to install the cameras, which will be linked to facial recognition software, is raising privacy fears among security experts and rights groups. The government said the system would allow it to perform crowd analytics and support anti-terror operations.

As part of the LaaP trial, we are testing out various kinds of sensors on the lampposts, including cameras that can support backend facial recognition capabilities, a GovTech spokesman said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

These capabilities may be used for performing crowd analytics and supporting follow-up investigation in event of a terror incident.

Singapore says the project is part of a broader Smart Nation plan to use cutting-edge technology to improve peoples lives and has pledged to be sensitive to privacy.

Video surveillance networks are common in cities like London or New York. But Ian Wilson, a security lecturer at Australias Murdoch University said he believed that Singapores would be different in that it might involve extensive facial recognition technology.

Such technology has become commonplace in Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Some top officials in Singapore played down the privacy concerns.

More reading/Source:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-surveillance/singapore-to-test-facial-recognition-on-lampposts-stoking-privacy-fears-idUSKBN1HK0RV
The rest of the article goes over the government defense of the project and looks into Chinese companies that are bidding to do the project as they already have experience in the space.

Would you want to see something like this in your city/town/neighborhood? Do you think it would make things safer?
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Kombucha posted...

Would you support the use of facial recognition surveillance in your city/neighborhood?

Hell naw
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