Police catch man in a crowd of 60,000 using advanced facial-recognition technology
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Loading... - Anja Lovec
- 13 Apr 2021
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Chinese police managed to identify and arrest a single man in a crowd of 60,000 at a pop concert last weekend.
The coppers used advanced facial recognition camera technology to locate the 31-year-old suspect who was wanted for "economic crimes", according to reports in state news agency Xinhua .
The man, known only as Mr Ao, was caught by cameras at the ticket entrance and arrested as he took his seat at the concert by Jacky Cheung in Nanchang city in eastern China.
"The suspect looked completely caught by surprise when we took him away," said police officer Li Jin.
"He didn't think the police would be able to catch him from a crowd of 60,000 so quickly," Mr Li added.
China has a gigantic surveillance network of over 170 million CCTV cameras. The country is expected to install a further 400 million over the next three years.
And this isn't the first time authorities have used facial recognition to make an arrest. Last year, Chinese police picked up 25 suspects at an international beer festival.
Mr Ao said he had driven 90km (56 miles) to attend the concert.
"If I knew, I wouldn't have gone [to the concert]," he appears to say in footage of the arrest.
China is a world leader when it comes to facial recognition and police in the city of Zhengzhou are even putting it into their sunglasses in an effort to hunt down criminals.
According to People’s Daily , four officers are using the glasses at the entrances to Zhengzhou’s east station.
The glasses have a camera connected to a smartphone-like device that allows the officers to take photos of suspicious individuals and compare them to a database back at headquarters.
The app brings up the suspect's vital information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address.
It also tells officers whether the suspects are on the run from the law, the address of the hotel where they are staying and information related to their internet usage.
