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“Vumacam’s technology was developed with the aim of preventing crime and therefore has no mass surveillance capability or purpose,” Pearman says. “The concerns of the so-called ‘activists’ cited are deliberately malicious, defamatory, and propaganda with no factual basis.”

MADELENE KRONJE

And while crime has temporarily decreased during the pandemic, it has exploded once again. Many companies we interviewed argue that this justifies more investment in surveillance technologies. “Crime-focused surveillance infrastructure is key to preventing, preventing and understanding crime, which is so critical to job creation and poverty reduction that currently hinders investment and economic growth,” says Pearman.

“We have found that surveillance technologies that are properly set up and have analytics as part of proactive rather than reactive solutions have a huge impact on criminal activity,” adds Jan Erasmus, NEC XON’s surveillance and analytics business leader.

Erasmus says security firms are now working to strengthen their facial recognition capabilities to detect suspected criminals. The technology relies on a database of searched people’s faces to compare with faces extracted from surveillance footage. Bidvest Protea Coin, a security provider, is teaming up with NEC XON to implement a system that uses 48,000 suspected suspects wanted for everything from rhino and abalone hunting to ATM bombings and theft of cell tower batteries. Both companies hope to share the system with the rest of the security industry, banks and government players.

However, there have already been cases where facial recognition was used in face databases of people without a criminal history. In 2016, as economically disadvantaged Black students protested high tuition fees at universities across the country, NEC XON collected the faces of protesters from photos and videos circulating on WhatsApp and social media; then compared them to university databases of student ID photos. Erasmus says the goal is not to stop the protesters, but to determine whether they are students (many of whom are not) and to prevent damage to university property, which is estimated to total rand 786 million ($52 million) nationally.

But five years later, when protests broke out again, students said they felt they were blamed. Ntyatyambo Volsaka, a 19-year-old law student and activist at the University of the Witwatersrand, says police arrived with riot gear, tear gas and rubber bullets and filmed students at close range to gather so-called “evidence.” .

“We try to make sure everyone is educated,” he says, “but the police treat us like animals.” Erasmus said NEC XON did not assist police with surveillance during the 2021 protests.