SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The world's biggest surveillance company you've never heard of:
For example, the research found 55,455 Hikvision networks in London. "From my experience of just walking around London, it would probably be several times over that. They're in almost every supermarket," says Samuel Woodhams, a researcher at Top10VPN who carried out the study.
The prevalence of Hikvision cameras overseas has caused anxieties around national security, even though it hasn't been proved that the company transfers its overseas data back to China. In 2019, the US passed a bill banning Hikvision from holding any contracts with the federal government.
What really made Hikvision infamous on the global stage was its involvement in China's oppressive policies in Xinjiang against Muslim minorities, mostly Uyghurs. Numerous surveillance cameras, many equipped with advanced facial recognition, have been installed both inside and outside the detention camps in Xinjiang to aid the government's control over the region. And Hikvision has been a big part of this activity. The company was found to have received at least $275 million in government contracts to build surveillance in the region and has developed AI cameras that can detect physical features of Uyghur ethnicity.
Presented with questions about Xinjiang by MIT Technology Review, Hikvision responded with a statement that did not address them directly but said the company "has and will continue to strictly comply with applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, following internationally accepted business ethics and business standards."
Adding Hikvision to the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals List) would do more than ratchet up tensions between the US and China—it would open up a new front in international sanctions, one in which tech companies increasingly find themselves embroiled in geopolitical power struggles.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @03:50PM (2 children)
Called power and money >> ethics.
True practically everywhere you go. The only differences are - who has the power and who has the money...
Don't get me wrong, I'd normally try to be ethical but if a Gov points guns at me and offers me money to do stuff, I might go help them spy on Uyghurs. Good old carrot and stick has worked for as long as there were carrots and sticks.
Especially when I know that if the muslim extremists get in power they'd do similar things to me too except they might point the guns at me and take my money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya [wikipedia.org]
If you think the muslim extremists won't do that you haven't been paying attention for centuries.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday June 24 2022, @11:12PM
>If you think the muslim extremists won't do that you haven't been paying attention for centuries.
I could say the same for American extremists (especially cops)
If you let the behavior of the [Group X] extremists dictate how you treat the normal people in that group - then the only logical conclusion is to treat everyone in every group like criminals.
(Score: 2) by jb on Saturday June 25 2022, @05:32AM
I'm confused. How does one right-shift by an abstract noun?