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For example, research found 55,455 Hikvision networks in London. “From my experience of just walking around London, it will probably be several times that. “It’s available in almost every supermarket,” says Samuel Woodhams, a researcher at Top10VPN who led the research.
The prevalence of Hikvision cameras overseas has raised national security concerns, although it has not been proven that the company relayed its overseas data back to China. In 2019, the US passed a bill Prohibiting Hikvision from entering into any contract with the federal government.
What really made Hikvision notorious on the global stage was its involvement in China’s repressive policies against the Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, mostly the Uyghurs. Numerous surveillance cameras, many equipped with advanced facial recognition, have been deployed both inside and outside the detention camps in Xinjiang to aid government control over the area. And Hikvision has been a big part of this activity. company found It has won government contracts worth at least $275 million to build surveillance in the area and has developed artificial intelligence cameras that can detect the physical characteristics of the Uyghur ethnicity.
When asked about Xinjiang by MIT Technology Review, Hikvision responded with a statement that did not address them directly, but stated that the company “continues and will strictly comply with the laws and regulations in force in the countries in which we operate in accordance with internationally recognized business ethics.” and business standards.”
“Roads [companies like Hikvision] Facial recognition systems that can keep people in place via checkpoints have made the entire region resilient, at least from the Uyghur perspective. [but] closed system. They often refer to it as an open-air prison,” says Darren Byler, an anthropologist at Simon Fraser University and author of the book. In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony. “And without these tech companies that wouldn’t really be possible.”
uncharted waters
Adding Hikvision to SDN would do more than increase tensions between the US and China; This will open a new front in international sanctions, where tech companies increasingly find themselves in geopolitical power struggles.
Healy says that criminal prosecution may be initiated for working or doing business with the company after the sanction is announced:[Hikvision] it can no longer interact with the US dollar or the US financial system. And generally speaking, other banks and other financial institutions around the world won’t be doing business with you either because they want to maintain access to the US dollar and US financial markets.”
At the very least, that means Hikvision won’t be able to sell its cameras outside of China, and their international revenues will fall to zero. However, it is unclear whether governments and companies that already use Hikvision cameras will be asked to replace them immediately. Then things get trickier when it comes to Hikvision services beyond hardware. Can existing Hikvision users accept software updates from the company? Are you using the company’s cloud storage? “Something exactly like this [the US government] can make an exception here,” says Healy, because the traditional implementation of the SDN list may not be practical in the digital age.
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