China now has about 300,000 cameras in Beijing under an estimated $6.5-billion, seven-year program dubbed the Grand Beijing Safeguard Sphere.

The huge system will soon include third generation facial recognition.

Although face recognition software still can't process rapidly moving images, China hopes that it can soon electronically identify faces out of a vast crowd.

Another troubling technology: chip and RFID embedded identification cards that, according to media reports, that contain a person's height, weight and identification number as well as health records, work history, education, travel, religion, ethnicity, reproductive history, police record, medical insurance status and the landlord's phone number.

Earlier this summer, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) charged that foreign-owned hotels in China were being pushed to contractually agree to allow police to install hardware and software to monitor guests' Internet traffic.

In addition, Zalud’s Blog has found some evidence that Chinese security officials have equipped taxis in Beijing with listening devices for remote monitoring.