The proposed new National Children’s Hospital; from an article on IPVM
Shaped like an eye.
Made for looking…
This afternoon.
Charles Rollet reports on IPVM (the ‘world’s leading authority on video surveillance’):
The world’s most expensive hospital project ever, the new Children’s Hospital in Ireland, has chosen an all-Hikvision surveillance system including specialized facial recognition cameras, IPVM has found.
Privacy experts and an Irish politician raised serious concerns about this to IPVM, due to the sensitivity of deploying facial recognition in a children’s hospital and the use of Hikvision cameras given its recent human rights sanctions and China government control.
The NCH, which is currently under construction in Dublin, has already attracted controversy for its spiraling price tag which now stands at $2 billion.
…IPVM made a Freedom of Information request about the NCH’s video surveillance system, and we received one detailing all the “equipment brand and models being used on the NCH project”
While NCH would not disclose the camera counts or pricing, we estimate in the range of a million Euros for the project including at least hundreds of cameras. Given the size of the hospital campus, the variety of high-end models selected (facial recognition, ANPR, PTZs, people-counting, etc.), this is a large project.
IPVM asked about Hikvision’s Xinjiang sanctions and we received a generic response ignoring this question:
“The safety of patients, visitors and staff at the new children’s hospital is of paramount importance to everyone working on the new children’s hospital project.
Stanley Security Systems, who have been working in this area for more than 25 years, were successful in the competitive procurement process for the installation of the security systems at the new children’s hospital.”
Using facial recognition on children is highly sensitive; in both Sweden and France, schools that attempted to use facial recognition were banned from doing so by data regulators due to the GDPR, which Ireland is also subject to.
IPVM asked the NCH directly why it had specified facial recognition cameras and we received this response:
“It has not yet been decided which aspect of this technology’s many capabilities will be used in the new children’s hospital. This decision will be taken nearer the opening of the hospital by Children’s Health Ireland and will be in line with Irish and European data protection and privacy legislation and in such a way as to ensure that the occupants of the hospital have the right protections afforded to them, in line with their privacy rights..”
Meanwhile…
The thing about CCTV facial recognition systems is that they don’t work unless you have a database of faces to recognise.
What’s in that database and from where it is being sourced are the questions that I’d be askinghttps://t.co/7gWZkQh8SR
— Fred Logue (@FredPLogue) December 6, 2019
Anyone?
Ireland National Children’s Hospital Chooses Hikvision End-to-End With Facial Recognition (IPVM)
Pic: IPVM
Facial Recognition?
That would be tough if you have identical twins
Why is this needed above a high quality run of the mill CCTV system? Would it, for example, reduce the number of security staff required?
And this
“It has not yet been decided which aspect of this technology’s many capabilities will be used in the new children’s hospital.” – So what, they just bought it for a laugh, it looked cool. A mealy-mouthed answer. Or as alluded to above, GDPR will prevent it’s use and it will be another huge waste of taxpayers.
And why not just say how much they are spending on it, why the secrecy, we are going to find out anyway, is it that they want it installed first so when they say it cost E20m we can’t say return it and get a regular system
Does DPC want to weigh in on this and who is the person that should be answering these questions on all things NCH related?
Its usually take 4-6 security lads to remove a drunk or junkie out of the hospital. They circle around the offender and guide them out without actually touching them.
Let’s not bother with equipping hospitals with such geekery as beds, staff,…walls, doors….
Idiots.