Last month, a young woman flew into Shenzhen and took a taxi to her office. She had a dispute with the driver, who drove off with her suitcase.
A lesser woman might have given the suitcase up for lost. She did not have a receipt, and hadn't noticed the taxi's license number. The odds were against her; there are some 12,000 taxis in Shenzhen and 25,000 taxi drivers.
But this woman was determined, and lucky, too, because Shenzhen has surveillance cameras at every major intersection and community entrance in the city. She walked along the route she'd traveled in the taxi, jotted down the numbers of the cameras, and was able to review the videotape from almost all of them with the help of local police. Still, she was only able to identify the model of the car she had ridden in, a model used by only two local cab companies.
Another bit of technology came to her rescue. Because all taxis in Shenzhen have GPS (global positioning systems), she was finally able to locate the taxi, find the driver, and get her suitcase back.
Her story was written up by a local paper, and many people were amused by the tale of a young woman from an IT company in Shanghai acting like a "crime scene investigator", searching for clues that would lead her to the taxi driver who had driven away with her suitcase.
But her story also indicates the extent to which we live under the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras. Cameras at major intersections catch motorists running red lights. Cameras in supermarkets deter shoplifters. Cameras at banks help police nab thieves using stolen credit cards. "Electronic eyes" at the entrances to residential areas guard against muggers and other criminals.
Like the young woman from Shanghai, many people have been helped by surveillance cameras. Three years ago, one Mr Wang parked his car near Peking University in Beijing and went inside to have lunch. When he returned, he discovered that his car had been broken into and his laptop and wallet stolen. Police reviewed surveillance footage and spotted a suspect, driving around the campus looking for likely cars to break into. Eventually, the police got their man, and Mr Wang got his laptop back.
Of course, there is a downside to such pervasive surveillance. In the wrong hands, cameras can become a frightening abuse of people's right to privacy.
In one well-known case, a surveillance camera caught a boy and girl kissing in a middle school classroom and the tape was shown on the school's close-circuit television network. The two teenagers took the school to court for violating their privacy, but the court ruled against them.
In Shanghai, subway commuters protested after a video of a young couple kissing by a station entrance was broadcast on a popular commercial website. It turned out that some subway employees made a copy of the tape and sent it to the website.
And in Shenzhen, people watching a police website found themselves peeking into their neighbors' bathrooms and bedrooms. The reason: Two temporary workers had re-directed a traffic surveillance camera at a flyover and trained it on an apartment building nearby.
The people responsible in the latter two cases were disciplined and lost their jobs. Still, they were the ones who got caught. For all the benefits of surveillance cameras, there are many cases of abuse, most of them unreported. Strict controls are needed.
E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn
