Huawei technology is used in the Chinese surveillance state
If we look to China with an open eye, there are some positive and negative aspects to be mentioned about the People’s Republic. On the one hand, the rise of China has brought us many things, most of the products that we have purchased in the last decade will probably come from the country, but on the other hand it has some downsides.
We often hear of a population that is mercilessly monitored and also of the strongly oppressed Uyghurs who are to be crammed into camps and re-educated. In order for this to work as efficiently as possible, the technology sector does not stop at such areas of application. This is now proven by an accidentally published document by Huawei.
The American newspaper The Washington Post has received a sensitive PowerPoint presentation that basically advertises that Huawei is the perfect supplier for the basis of the intelligent prison. Although the presentation is no longer available from the company’s server, it still gives interesting insights into Huawei’s business conduct. Metadata make it possible to classify the document from 2014 to 2020.
Specifically, the manufacturer refers in the documents to technology that is used in prisons in the Xinjiang region. Many of the oppressed Uyghurs live here in particular, but Huawei does not explicitly mention the population group in the documents. Systems for face recognition are discussed, among other things, but other methods are also discussed.
Further examples are the recognition of a person based on their voice, a system for tracking the location of a person (based on surveillance cameras) and the monitoring of employees in companies.
The fact that a company like Huawei is involved in possible support for the Chinese surveillance apparatus should hardly come as a surprise, which is why I find the media outcry about the documents a bit exaggerated. Nevertheless, the content shows once again how closely the technology company and the government are connected and that the moral compass is pointing in the wrong direction (in my opinion).
Via The Verge
