Hi-tech surveillance to eye Chinese

SHENZHEN, China — At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

The program will start this month in Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million. Most citizens will also be issued a residency card fitted with a powerful computer chip programmed by the same company.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

Security experts describe China's plans as the world's largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to help the Communist Party retain power by maintaining tight controls on an increasingly prosperous population at a time of increasing street protests.

"If they do not get the permanent card, they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future," said Michael Lin, vice president for investor relations at Florida-based China Public Security Technology, the company providing the technology.

China Public Security has raised much of the money to develop the system's technology from two investment funds in Plano, Texas: Pinnacle Fund and Pinnacle China Fund.