Technology will enable officers to identify suspects and missing people in real time, and force will also install surveillance cameras on patrol cars Hong Kong police will incorporate facial recognition technology into their surveillance cameras as early as the end of this year, enabling officers to identify suspects and missing people in real time, the force has revealed.
Senior Superintendent Eric Leung Ming-leung said that from the end of July, the force would also expand its "SmartView" surveillance camera installation programme to mobile cameras installed on 60 patrol cars that would be able to identify vehicles and licence plates.
"We will see if it's possible to use facial recognition in our SmartView systems by the end of this year," Leung, of the force's operations wing, revealed.
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Police launched the SmartView project in April last year after conducting a pilot scheme to install 15 sets of cameras in Mong Kok in March. As of Wednesday, the force had installed 3,162 cameras across the city.
Leung said the force aimed to install no fewer than 2,000 sets of surveillance cameras each year from 2025 to 2027. These roughly 6,000 sets, containing more than 15,000 individual cameras, would be installed across Hong Kong by the end of 2027.
He said police would install the cameras on road signs and traffic lights, and also erect pillars for more sets this year.
He added that the force would need to finalise how its back-end system would support facial recognition functions for the advanced technology to be deployed in surveillance cameras.
"When we are installing cameras, many are already equipped with this function, but we need to upgrade our system to coordinate the work. This requires time," Leung said.
While Leung did not disclose how many would contain facial recognition technology, he said their height and the foot traffic flow of the locations were factors the force would consider when installing such cameras.
Facial recognition would be used mainly in two ways, Leung said. One was for investigation purposes, to identify suspects or missing people from surveillance footage, while the other was for detection.
"If you have identified the face and features of a suspicious or missing person. You can key that [selected] area into the back-end system, and then ask the system whether these features have been captured by these cameras," Leung said.
The force could also programme its surveillance camera system to alert officers when suspects or missing people whose facial identities had been entered into the system were detected.
"[We] can ask the system if any cameras have captured the [relevant] people, and then alert our investigating officers. Then, we could respond to that," Leung said, describing this function as "instantaneous".
Before facial recognition was tried out across police cameras, Leung said, the force would introduce mobile surveillance camera systems through two sets installed atop patrol cars.
These cameras would be positioned at the left front and right rear positions on top of the cars, and would be equipped with a feature to identify licence plates. Sample footage taken by the mobile cameras displayed road conditions with a clear view of passing vehicles and their licence plates.
The force added that surveillance cameras would blur surrounding buildings to comply with privacy requirements.
The new form of surveillance would be rolled out by the end of July on 60 vehicles, with 200 patrol cars expected to be equipped with the new technology by the end of the year.
"Its function would be similar to [surveillance cameras] mounted on a lamp post, but mobile surveillance cameras would be equipped with agility and mobility," Senior Inspector Anson Lam Ho-wa said.
Lam said mobile cameras could be used to survey fallen trees during a typhoon, help police officers gauge the situation and coordinate disaster response efforts with other departments.
These cameras mounted on patrol cars could also be used to identify suspicious vehicles and aid police in pursuing criminals who were fleeing crime scenes by tracking their licence plate numbers.
"During daily patrols, the mobile surveillance cameras will film and analyse data of vehicles around. When an investigation arises, officers can search relevant records for any target vehicles," Lam said.
Any footage filmed by the mobile cameras would be kept for 30 days before destruction, if it was not used for an investigation. However, analyses of vehicles from the footage could be kept within the force for more than 30 days.
Leung said police had begun talks with the Housing Authority, Transport Department, Leisure and Cultural Services Department and the MTR Corporation to connect their CCTV footage to the force's surveillance footage network.
Leung estimated it would take two to three years to link up the force's cameras with other government departments due to various technical upgrades required between different systems.
"Police linking up with other departments' or organisations' cameras would not only increase our coverage, but also hasten our investigations," Chief Inspector Kevin Leung Yin-man of the operations wing said.
He said officers currently had to take multiple steps to locate surveillance cameras owned by another party, review the footage, then compare it with the force's own CCTV images to trace suspects.
"The force hopes to loosen protocol to enable our colleagues to directly view and search for targets [during investigations]," he said.
As of the end of June, police had detected 351 cases using surveillance footage from cameras under the programme and arrested 628 people. Among them were 157 theft cases, 37 burglaries, 29 wounding cases and five killings.
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