That's a Lot of Cameras!

[Ben]

A half a million surveillance cameras to be deployed in Chongqing, China. I'm curious into how they will manage to efficiently monitor them all. Remind me to wear my tinfoil suit if I ever visit the place.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/06/500-000-surveillance-cameras-to-oversee-chongqing-china/

[Harold Tuttle]

Cisco, the world’s biggest manufacturer of networking equipment, is expected to supply the hardware necessary to operate the complex surveillance system, according to people familiar with the deal. Cisco was brought in by Chinese security company Hikvision Digital Technology, the project’s main contractor.

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/07/05/china-to-deploy-huge-big-brother-surveillance-network-with-ciscos-help/

[birdman]

A half a million surveillance cameras to be deployed in Chongqing, China. I'm curious into how they will manage to efficiently monitor them all. Remind me to wear my tinfoil suit if I ever visit the place.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/06/500-000-surveillance-cameras-to-oversee-chongqing-china/

4 shifts, one person per monitor, 4 images per monitor = ~1.5% of the city's population, (and even less productive older people can do it)...With a per capita GDP in the city of about $3k, labor cost would be less than 2% of the total GDP, and provide employment for the large amount of migrant workers....scaling to 8-16 cameras per person, (the most one person could reasonably monitor with no cueing technology), it is likely the labor costs per year would be far less than the installation cost of such a system.  In other words, it's amazing what a huge supply of cheap labor can do!  (I'm being sarcastic, even china wouldn't be this dumb...would they?)

[vaskidmark]

Other than the overwhelming desire to keep tabs on everybody, does anyone have any idea why they are installing camers all over te city?

I have to admit it does sound like a way to ensure as-close-to-full-employment as you can get without actually doing something or getting something from those employed.

stay safe.

[makattak]

4 shifts, one person per monitor, 4 images per monitor = ~1.5% of the city's population, (and even less productive older people can do it)...With a per capita GDP in the city of about $3k, labor cost would be less than 2% of the total GDP, and provide employment for the large amount of migrant workers....scaling to 8-16 cameras per person, (the most one person could reasonably monitor with no cueing technology), it is likely the labor costs per year would be far less than the installation cost of such a system.  In other words, it's amazing what a huge supply of cheap labor can do!  (I'm being sarcastic, even china wouldn't be this dumb...would they?)

What's the cost to record all that data, though? (If they don't record it, it will be of less use.)

[Perd Hapley]

Other than the overwhelming desire to keep tabs on everybody, does anyone have any idea why they are installing camers all over te city?

Why, to help citizens to obey the law. Why else, comrade? 

And does it really matter if every moniter is, um, monitered?

[makattak]

And does it really matter if every moniter is, um, monitered?

Yes. Otherwise, how do you recognize the citizen to pick them up for subversive activities? (Or am I misunderstanding your question?)

[Perd Hapley]

I'm saying that as long as the public believes it is being watched, that may accomplish their goals. Monitor a large enough, random-ish sample, enough for a steady stream of arrests or disappearings.

[makattak]

I'm saying that as long as the public believes it is being watched, that may accomplish their goals. Monitor a large enough, random-ish sample, enough for a steady stream of arrests or disappearings.

Ah. Your question was not does it matter if they are recording so long as they are monitoring. (What I thought.)

It was, "what does it matter if they actually monitor ALL of them?" Got it.

Quite right, too.

[Ben]

Why, to help citizens to obey the law. Why else, comrade? 

And does it really matter if every moniter is, um, monitered?

Of course it does. There's no way for them to emulate that one Twilight Zone episode unless everyone is watched. Of course in the TZ episode, all the monitors were robotic and hovered around the city looking for inappropriate behavior.

[birdman]

What's the cost to record all that data, though? (If they don't record it, it will be of less use.)

Well, bulk media storage is about $0.015/GB (tape), VGA at 10fps (minimum for anything really useful), is about 0.2-0.5 mbit/s (1.5-3.75 MB/min) with h.264, so 500,000 cameras would generate a little under 2000GB/minute, or a media cost of $30/min ($16million per year), and would require 1-2000 high speed LTO/ultrium4 tape drives running continuously to store (about $2-3 million in storage drives and servers).  Compared to the capital cost of the cameras ($0.25-1 billion or more), the storage is insignificant (as a note, with VGA resolution, those cameras would be generating about 1.5 TRILLION pixels per second....which doesn't sound like that much, except for the fact that it's the equivalent of imaging the entire globe at 2.5" resolution once per day, or taking a still DSLR photo of everyone on earth every two hours, or watching 1/10 of all the movies ever made in real time....okay, maybe it is a lot (btw, 2TB/min is about 0.3% the total data generation/transport of the human race right now)

[Balog]

Of course it does. There's no way for them to emulate that one Twilight Zone episode unless everyone is watched. Of course in the TZ episode, all the monitors were robotic and hovered around the city looking for inappropriate behavior.

Anyone else reminded of Diamond Age?

[230RN]

A half a million surveillance cameras to be deployed in Chongqing, China.

They're probably just expensive American knockoffs.

[sanglant]

dvd like caching(5-15 min) see something happen hit the save button?

no need to monitor them at all, a country with no true rights*, just do random arrests/disappearings.

*not quite right, but closer then should ever happen.

[birdman]

dvd like caching(5-15 min) see something happen hit the save button?

no need to monitor them at all, a country with no true rights*, just do random arrests/disappearings.

*not quite right, but closer then should ever happen.

5-15min is 150-450TB with a sustained write performance of 500GB/sec...enterprise class SSD is gonna run $2-5 million, might as well just record everything and re-use the tapes after a month or so, it would be cheaper.  (HD's would run similar costs, just provide longer cache)

[Bogie]

Hmmm... What I'd do... I'd trash stuff that is over 24 hours old, except in event of a situation like a robbery.
 
What I'm wondering - how do they manage the bandwidth for a monitoring center, much less central data storage?
 
Maybe facial recognition software? Who knows...

[sanglant]

i meant for each feed.

[KD5NRH]

I predict a good market for extremely lifelike masks of Chinese government officials.

[birdman]

Hmmm... What I'd do... I'd trash stuff that is over 24 hours old, except in event of a situation like a robbery.
 
What I'm wondering - how do they manage the bandwidth for a monitoring center, much less central data storage?
 
Maybe facial recognition software? Who knows...

It's not that bad, the compression is done at the camera, and I would bet the aggregate remotely to 1GE levels where convenient, but the total rate is "only" a few hundred 10GE ports, it's not that bad.  With current server architectures, you could do the entire ingest and processing in 10 racks or so, drives in another 10 or so, it's not even that big of a data center...and you would aggregate to 40g fiber in substations, so the total I/O cable-wise wouldn't be bad.

[seeker_two]

Gee....if China keeps this up, they'll be as repressive as Great Britain.....