Police say linking mall cameras to AI facial recognition network complies with Hong Kong privacy laws

Equipping Hong Kong’s CCTV network with AI facial recognition software and connecting it to shopping mall security cameras would not breach local privacy laws, police have said.

Police have said that the AI facial recognition feature will be added to the city’s SmartView surveillance system as early as this month, with four private shopping malls set to be connected to the network this year, local media reported on Friday.

The four malls are understood to be Olympian City in Tai Kok Tsui, Tuen Mun Town Plaza, Kwai Chung Shopping Centre, and Sierra Life in Fanling, local media reported.

Leung Ming-leung, a senior superintendent in the police’s Operations Bureau, said the AI facial recognition system would not operate round-the-clock, but would instead require sign-off from an officer ranked inspector or above.

“We first ask whether using SmartView is essential to solving the crime. How many cameras and how much footage must be reviewed? Does that scope align with the investigation’s objectives? These points must be settled before any application is approved,” Leung said in Cantonese.

He said the technology would help officers track down suspects or missing persons by automatically identifying whether their faces had been caught on camera in a particular area during a specific timeframe.

Alternatively, the system could trace an individual’s face in real time, alerting officers to when and where they appear, Leung added.

The CCTV footage will be automatically deleted 30 days after capture, while metadata such as timestamps and locations will be retained for up to 180 days.

‘Added bonus’

Leung also said that the connections to shopping malls would not breach privacy laws, based on assessments by the police’s legal team and the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data.

“These malls are already equipped with security cameras, often serving the same public safety purpose as our SmartView system. Linking into them is merely an added bonus,” he said.

The SmartView project was launched in 2024 and, as of last month, had helped solve 2,000 crimes and led to the arrest of about 2,800 suspects on charges including murder and arson.

Authorities aim to incorporate 60,000 surveillance cameras across the city into the system by 2028, by installing new cameras and linking private systems and those operated by other government departments to the police network.

A further 6,500 surveillance cameras are planned between 2028 and 2031 under SmartView’s third phase.

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Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.