'Fears over lampposts eroding trust in smart city'

Protesters managed to bring down one of the new smart lampposts in Kwun Tong last August. File photo: RTHK

A government-appointed committee has told the administration to drop its plan to use smart lampposts to monitor illegal dumping of waste if it wants to restore people's trust in Hong Kong's entire smart city initiative.



The new multi-functional lampposts have an LED lighting system and are more environmentally friendly than traditional ones, and as well as the lights, they come with cameras and various built-in sensors which can be used to monitor traffic flow, air quality and the weather.



But the installation of the first 50 lampposts in parts of Kowloon last year sparked privacy concerns, and almost 20 were damaged and one toppled completely during an anti-government demonstration in August. Protesters said they feared the information collected by the lampposts could be passed to the authorities to enable them to track people.



The opposition to the new technology had prompted the government to declare last summer that it wouldn't activate some of the functions, including identifying illegal dumping and car licence plates, until a "public consensus" is reached on the issue.



But in its latest report, the Multi-functional Smart Lampposts Technical Advisory Ad Hoc Committee warns that people are still concerned that the high-definition cameras in the lampposts could record pedestrians passing by, even though there is no facial-recognition capability.



It says the government should keep this function switched off until alternative technology which is less privacy intrusive is found to replace the cameras.



A member of the committee, Francis Fong who is the honorary president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, said it is important to regain public trust in the whole initiative to turn the SAR into a "smart city".



"The smart lampposts are a very key component of the smart city development so I think that when the components that have major privacy issues from the public have been removed, the smart lamppost project should carry on," he said.



The government is next planning to install around 400 of the new lampposts in Central, Causeway Bay, Tsim Sha Tsui and Kwun Tong.