In China, Beware: A Camera May Be Watching You

Comment: Pretty much  like America these days.. After all, it's all one government anyway...

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Ed Jones /AFP/Getty Images

 Hao Hao Report

China is becoming a surveillance state. In recent years, the government has installed more than 20 million cameras across a country where a decade ago there weren't many.

Today, in Chinese cities, cameras are everywhere: on highways, in public parks, on balconies, in elevators, in taxis, even in the stands at sporting events.

Officials say the cameras help combat crime and maintain "social stability" — a euphemism for shutting up critics.

In fact, the government routinely uses cameras to monitor and intimidate dissidents. Human rights activists worry that more surveillance will erode the freedom of ordinary people and undermine what little ability they have to question their rulers.

Life Under Surveillance

Li Tiantian knows firsthand how the state can use video images against people it doesn't like. Li, 46, is an outspoken human rights lawyer in Shanghai.

Police watch Li so closely, it's best to visit her after dark and use a grove of trees behind her apartment building as cover. Once inside, she'll tell you to turn off your cellphone and put it in another room.

"People with technological know-how all said the cops can use cellphones to monitor people, track your location, even use cellphones as a listening device," Li explains, as dumplings she has prepared bubble in a pot. "People have reached a consensus that when we chat together, we put cellphones away."

 Li Tiantian, a human rights lawyer, is under heavy surveillance by Chinese authorities. She says police tried to get her boyfriend to break up with her by showing him photos of other men she had been involved with. / Frank Langfitt/NPR

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Sound paranoid?

It isn't.

Chinese state security agents have privately confirmed they can turn cellphones into listening devices. Li says they also eavesdrop on her conversations to track her movements and arrest her.

"One morning, when I was going to a court hearing, I called a gypsy cab," says Li. "Police found out through the telephone that the car was coming to my compound. Then they waited there to catch me."

Li takes most of this in stride, but what really angered her was when agents invaded her private life. In 2011, they showed her boyfriend photos of other men she'd been involved with.

They also tried to show him surveillance camera video of Li entering hotels with the men at various times, but the boyfriend refused to watch.
Li criticizes China's government, talking freely with journalists and other people on China's increasingly freewheeling Internet. She says Shanghai authorities are trying to force her to leave the city and return to her home in far western China.

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