Smart glasses for Chinese police: a new tool for finding people and controlling the streets

Smart glasses, after the hype around classic consumer versions like Google Glass have died down, continue to conquer public sectors in various parts of the world. The next stage in the development of this technology was the introduction of devices worn by Chinese law enforcement agencies.

As China Daily reports, Chinese law enforcement officers have begun to use specially designed smart glasses in practice. They are based on fully domestic hardware and software. The devices are intended for use in the routine work of law enforcement agencies: from patrolling districts to regulating traffic flows and quickly searching for missing citizens.

Peculiarities of the technology and its efficiency

A practical example of operation shows the high response speed of a smart optical system. With the help of glasses, the police managed to identify in a matter of minutes an elderly man who suffered from memory loss, was not oriented in space and could not provide his personal data. Connecting the gadget to the system helped identify the citizen and return him to his loved ones within just 20 minutes.

Privacy nuances and risks of total surveillance

Despite the obvious benefits of AI technologies for locating citizens and public safety, the devices cause a sharp controversy. Such wearable electronics have unimpeded access to centralized state databases of personal data of citizens and use algorithms for instant recognition of persons. On the scale of China, which has the world’s largest fixed video surveillance structure with many hundreds of millions of cameras, the introduction of personal smart glasses is an additional twist of large-scale surveillance.