Is Australia’s fear over Chinese-made surveillance cameras justified?
- Cameras by China’s Dahua and Hikvision have been linked to rights violations in Xinjiang, while both firms also work with the CCP, Australia’s government audit showed
- Australia should take a more systematic approach in the use of all critical data-collecting communication technologies and create rules for suppliers
According to Paterson, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has expressed similar concerns about the cameras, saying “where data would end up and what else it could be used for would be of great concern to me and my agency”.
So, why are Australian officials so worried about these cameras, and is the level of concern justified?
World’s largest video surveillance firms
The two China-based companies that supplied these cameras are Hikvision and Dahua. The MIT Technology Review called Hikvision, which is headquartered in China’s eastern city of Hangzhou, “the world’s biggest surveillance company you’ve never heard of”.
Hikvision is indeed the largest manufacturer of video surveillance equipment in the world, selling to around 200 countries. Dahua is Hikvision’s largest global competitor and the second-largest company in this space.
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Links to human rights violations
In 2019, the United States added both companies to its Entity List, which requires foreign companies to file for additional government approvals to continue buying parts or technologies from US companies. (The Biden administration added six more Chinese entities to the blacklist last week, saying they were linked to China’s surveillance balloon programme.)
All the Chinese companies on the list have been deemed to be “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States”.
The reasoning was not sugarcoated: “Specifically, these entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uygurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.”
Last year, the UK also banned Hikvision surveillance systems from being installed in “sensitive” sites.
Links to the CCP
Both Hikvision and Dahua sell to and work with the Chinese Communist Party and government.
Investigations by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) found that in 2019, Dahua received around US$19.9 million (A$28.8 million) in Chinese government subsidies. Dahua also has its own Communist Party committee and supplies technology for numerous projects linked to the Chinese government.
On its Chinese language website, Hikvision often showcases collaborations with the government’s public security apparatus.
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My research shows that through close cooperation with the Chinese Party and government, surveillance companies can access large subsidies to support their domestic and international businesses. Caught between domestic business growth opportunities and international regulations, companies often choose to work in line with party-state policies. The market opportunities are simply larger this way.
Greater scrutiny by countries like the US, UK and Australia may further push Chinese surveillance companies to seek relationships in countries that are perceived as more stable commercial partners. The Chinese government has been calling for a further decoupling of the economy from its rivals and strengthening collaborations with China-friendly nations.
So, would Australian data be safe?
Links to the Communist Party are just part of the concern. So is the potential for data collected by these companies to be transferred to the Chinese government.
Whether these companies do actually transfer data to Chinese intelligence agencies would be hard to either prove or disprove. Paterson acknowledges “we may never know if data is being exfiltrated from these cameras”. In a statement to Time, Hikvision and Dahua representatives rejected claims they store or share user data.
However, Chinese security laws passed in 2017 can compel Chinese organisations to transfer the data they collect to the government. As a senior analyst from ASPI explains, the companies may say the data wouldn’t be accessed, but “if there is a national security or national defence demand for that data, then it would be”.
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The Australian focus has so far been on identifying “risk” to national security, but only that coming from China. This is despite other countries, such as the US, previously being connected to espionage via tech providers.
Instead, Australia should take a more systematic approach that guides the use of all critical data-collecting communications technologies and creates rules that all suppliers must adhere to.
Ausma Bernot is a postdoctoral researcher at Charles Sturt University’s Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security.