It took police just 7 minutes to find him.įour months later, a Chinese college student who was writing a thesis on Skynet decided to take on the same challenge in Hunan. To demonstrate the system, police took a mugshot of him before he started to “escape”. Last year, BBC journalist John Sudworth visited one of China’s local police control rooms. State media and local governments often like to tout how well it works - and judging from some accounts, they may not be wrong. Security cameras at the Tiananmen Square.Īuthorities claim that the system is intended to keep the public safe. Rather, it’s a literal translation of its Chinese name “Tianwang”, which is part of an idiom that means justice is always done. To be clear, the project has nothing to do with the villainous AI from The Terminator films, despite sharing the same name. State media boasts that it’s the world’s biggest surveillance network, calling it “the eyes that safeguard China” - but it’s also led to fears about the impact of constant surveillance on the public at large, and that it might be used to target dissidents. Dedicated to “live surveillance and recording”, there are plans to add hundreds of millions more by 2020. The “Skynet Project”, China’s national surveillance system, has more than 20 million cameras deployed in public spaces across the country, according to state media. It’s said to be able to catch a fugitive within minutes. Under the project, more than 20 million cameras have been set up in public spaces across the country. Skynet is the Chinese government’s video surveillance system, which it claims is for tracking criminals.