THIS WEEK IN SURVEILLANCE

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS SURVEILLING U.S. CITIZENS WITH BLACKLISTED CHINESE TECH. The appetite for spying on thy neighbor is running rampant among local governments throughout the U.S. If that’s not bad enough, it’s being fueled by illicit deals between blacklisted Chinese companies and domestic political authorities.
Two Chinese companies, Dahua Technology and Hikvision, have been barred from business in the U.S. due to human rights abuses associated with their invasive surveillance technologies. It’s the kind of stuff used in China on dissident populations like the Uighurs, but also to minutely control and punish average Chinese citizens.
But that hasn’t stopped more than 300 U.S. government entities, including city and county governments and schools, from doing business with the firms.
Neither has an FCC directive identifying the firms as security threats, due to their direct ties with the communist Chinese government. The FCC warned that data collected by systems sold by the companies were open to Chinese government exploitation.
A recent story by The Epoch Times noted that according to government contract data, purchases have been happening in droves since August 2019. The information was obtained via GovSpend, a Florida Technology company that tracks such data, and has been published in TechCrunch.
Local governments have skirted the Federal block on doing business with the Chinese firms since they’re only prohibited from using federal funds in making purchases.
Domed surveillance cameras, thermal camera technology, and other equipment are among the systems purchased. Most local governments contacted by Techcrunch declined to comment.
Both Dahua and Hikvision have been tied to appalling Chinese activities warring on its citizens. The U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, and the U.K. have all specified Chinese abuses of religious and ethnic minorities including torture, sterilizations, political indoctrination, and forced labor. The abuses have been condemned strongly as “genocide.”