Hong Kong police will add AI facial recognition to the city’s SmartView CCTV network as early as this month, allowing officers to search footage for suspects and high-risk missing people and to receive an alert when a person’s face appears on camera.
SmartView now includes about 10,000 police cameras, along with connections to a further 10,000 run by other government departments and public organizations, at sites including the airport, MTR stations and public housing estates. The force is working toward 60,000 cameras by 2028, with another 6,500 planned for the Northern Metropolis, bringing the total to about 66,500 in 2031.
Senior Superintendent Leung Ming-leung of the police Operations Bureau described two uses: retrospective searches for a suspect in specific footage, and real-time tracking, in which a recent photo of a missing elderly person triggers an alert when that person appears on camera. Each use would need sign-off from an officer ranked inspector or above. “We first ask whether using SmartView is essential to solving the crime,” Leung said in Cantonese.
Superintendent Raymond Cheng said the feature can be activated on all police cameras and on third-party feeds connected to the system, but will only be triggered during active criminal searches or to find high-risk missing people. “For the 24 hours’ analysis, not all of them can be used at the same time because of the resources,” he said. “But if we need to use, we can spend the resources on particular CCTV, and of course it can be used around the clock.”
CCTV footage will be kept for a maximum of 31 days. Photos of people captured by the facial recognition system, along with metadata such as location, date, time and facial characteristics, will be kept for 180 days. Police said use of the system is limited to national security, crime prevention and detection, and public safety and order, and that its procedures follow an independent privacy impact assessment and consultation with the Privacy Commissioner.
At least four shopping malls have agreed to connect their cameras, the first by the end of the year. They are understood to be Olympian City, Tuen Mun Town Plaza, Kwai Chung Shopping Centre and Sierra Life. Malls must already post signs warning that recording is in progress, but Cheng said the Department of Justice advised that disclosing a link to the police network should be voluntary, and that police would encourage malls to post a notice.
In pilot tests, the technology helped police arrest a robbery suspect and find an elderly man with dementia within 1.5 hours of his being reported missing. Since its launch in 2024, the network has helped solve nearly 2,200 criminal cases and led to more than 2,800 arrests.
Sources: Hong Kong Free Press, RTHK, The Standard
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
