A BBC correspondent was spotted by China's surveillance program for public security, the Skynet Project, just seven minutes after he "escaped" during a test in Guiyang City in Guizhou Province, southwest China, on Sunday.
In the test at the public security center, Guiyang police first took a mugshot of correspondent John Sudworth who then put his "escape plan" into motion.
John was going to the city center of Guiyang and headed for the railway station. On his way to the station, he passed by several surveillance cameras on a footbridge.
BBC Photo
After he passed through the security check in the station hall, several police targeted him from behind and the security center matched the image collected at the station with the mugshot stored in the Skynet Project.
BBC Photo
The project is a real-time pedestrian detection and recognition system, which can read faces, gender, age and even ethnicity. According to a surveillance camera producer, the technology, which has racked up sales of one million cameras, can even match every face with an ID card, and trace back people's movements within one week.
Such an advanced and sophisticated system would be expected to incur public concerns over privacy.
The Guiyang police explained that police officers will use the system when people are in need of help.
"If you don't have anything to hide from, there is no need to worry," Sudworth said.
China has about 20 million surveillance cameras which are used to maintain public security and help police track fugitives, according to a China Central Television documentary on society safety.
Air traffic controllers in Denver lost communications with planes for 90 seconds earlier this week and had to scramble to use backup frequencies in the latest Federal Aviation Administration equipment failure.
The outage at a control center that directs planes flying at high altitude between airports all over the country on Monday afternoon affected communications, not radar, the FAA's head of air traffic control, Frank McIntosh, said during a House hearing Thursday. This communications failure follows two high-profile outages of radar and communications in the past 2 1/2 weeks at a facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of the Newark, New Jersey, airport.
The FAA said in a statement that the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center lost communications for approximately 90 seconds. McIntosh said both the primary and main backup frequencies went down, so the controllers had to turn to an emergency frequency to communicate.
“Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots. Aircraft remained safely separated and there were no impacts to operations,” the FAA said.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California told McIntosh during the hearing that these outages are happening more regularly and it’s concerning every time.
“We know that there are staffing and equipment problems at air traffic control,” Garcia said. “We know that the problems have gone back decades in some cases, but it’s still an absolutely shocking system failure and we need immediate solutions.”
Last week, the Trump administration announced a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul an air traffic control system that relies on antiquated equipment. Air travel is safe even if the air traffic control system is old, but the problems in Newark were unacceptable and could have been prevented if the system had been upgraded sooner, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a Thursday op-ed in Newsweek.
The Newark airport has generally led the nation in flight cancellations and delays ever since both radar and communications went out on April 28 and again on May 9. A third similar problem happened Sunday, but that time the backup system worked and kept radar online.
“The safety of the traveling public cannot continue being put at risk,” Democrat and ranking member Rep. Rick Larsen said after the hearing. “Problems with our system have crossed administrations, but safety improvements cannot span generations. We need action now.”
The FAA and airlines that fly out of Newark met again Thursday to discuss cutting flights because there aren’t enough controllers to handle them all. Those conversations will continue for a third day on Friday, but the FAA isn't likely to issue a decision immediately. More than 140 flights have been canceled at Newark Thursday.
Officials developed the plan to upgrade the air traffic control system after a deadly midair collision in January between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people in the skies over Washington, D.C. Several other crashes this year also put pressure on officials to act.
A United Airlines jetliner prepares to push off from a gate at Denver International Airport Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
