Glance up while strolling through parts of downtown Hong Kong and, chances are, you’ll notice the glassy black lens of a surveillance camera trained on the city’s crowded streets.

And that sight will become more common in the coming years, as the city’s police pursue an ambitious campaign to install thousands of cameras to elevate their surveillance capabilities.

Though it consistently ranks among the world’s safest big cities, police in the Asian financial hub say the new cameras are needed to fight crime – and have raised the possibility of equipping them with powerful facial recognition and artificial intelligence tools.

That’s sparked alarm among some experts who see it as taking Hong Kong one step closer to the pervasive surveillance systems of mainland China, warning of the technology’s repressive potential.

Hong Kong police had previously set a target of installing 2,000 new surveillance cameras this year, and potentially more than that each subsequent year. The force plans to eventually introduce facial recognition to these cameras, security chief Chris Tang told local media in July – adding that police could use AI in the future to track down suspects.
In a statement to CNN, the Hong Kong Police Force said it was studying how police in other countries use surveillance cameras, including how they use AI. But it’s not clear how many of the new cameras may have facial recognition capabilities, or whether there’s a timeline for when the tech will be introduced.

Tang and the Hong Kong police have repeatedly pointed to other jurisdictions, including Western democracies, that also make wide use of surveillance cameras for law enforcement. For instance, Singapore has 90,000 cameras and the United Kingdom has more than seven million, Tang told local newspaper Sing Tao Daily in June.

While some of those places, like the UK, have started using facial recognition cameras, experts say these early experiments have highlighted the need for careful regulation and privacy protections. Hong Kong police told CNN they would “comply with relevant laws” and follow strong internal guidelines – but haven’t elaborated in depth on what that would look like.