Hong Kong protesters cut down and study the city's smart lampposts

In 2019 Hong Kong protesters cut down 20 of the city's smart lampposts, which are streetlights equipped with sensors and cameras, in order to counter the threat that they were vectors for surveillance technologies such as facial and licence plate recognition. TickTack Technology, which provided the lampposts, terminated its contract with the Hong Kong government because of the property damage and threats to its employees. Protesters uploaded pictures of the lampposts' inner workings to Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter for analysis, speculating that the internal hardware might be similar to that used by the Chinese government to surveil and repress the country's minority Uighur population.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/why-hong-kong-protesters-are-cutting-down-lampposts/597145/ FRT

Writer: Sidney Fussell

Publication: The Atlantic