Over the past few years, surveillance in China has intensified. While it’s designed to keep us safe and free from crime and illegal activities, there has been a small backlash in some Chinese schools since parents are worried that the extra CCTV coverage could do more harm than good.
Imagine you are a student sitting in a classroom, and everything that you do is recorded by the camera over your head and live-streamed to millions of netizens. This is not a scene from Black Mirror. Shuidi Zhibo is a live-streaming platform providing users with access to more than 200 video feeds from kindergarten to senior high school classrooms across the country. On the platform, users can gain free access to these real-time videos without any identity verifications.
According to Shanghai Daily, one of the schools - No. 1 Senior High School in Yuzhou, Henan - claimed that the webcams were requested by parents and teachers for the purpose of classroom control and preventing bullying. The lives-treaming was said to allow the migrant parents to conveniently watch after their left-behind children online. At other schools, the cameras were intended for security and monitoring exams.
However, as the videos became available for millions to watch online, students started to become opposed to the live streams, arguing that their privacy was violated. Additionally, some raised safety concerns, claiming that the footage could be exploited since it was easily available online, potentially putting students at risk.
On the other hand, not all parents are strongly against this policy, as they believe that these cameras would allow them to keep an eye on their children’s performance at school.
After facing some public pressure, many campuses have stopped the live-streaming function while other schools have limited viewing privilege to just parents and teachers.
[Image via Shanghai Daily]
