The British government has ordered that Chinese-made surveillance cameras are no longer installed in “sensitive” areas over concerns of communist espionage on British territory.
Following a security review, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Oliver Dowden, said that “in light of the threat to the UK and the increasing capability and connectivity of these systems, additional controls are required”.
“Departments have therefore been instructed to cease deployment of such equipment onto sensitive sites, where it is produced by companies subject to the National Intelligence Law of the People’s Republic of China,” he added.
The issue of Chinese surveillance cameras came to the fore following the downfall of then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock last year after footage emerged of him breaching the very lockdown rules he had forced upon the public by conducting an extramarital affair with a subordinate in the Health Department. It was later reported that the cameras that had caught the tryst on film were made by the Chinese tech firm Hikvision — although it was not determined that the Chinese had any involvement in leaking the footage to the British press.
Nevertheless, concerns have continued to mount over Chinese espionage in Westminster, particularly following the revelation that the founder of the British Chinese Project, Christine Lee, was alleged by the MI5 security service to have been operating as a spy for Beijing within the halls of power in London for years. Lee was closely aligned with the left-wing opposition Labour Party, having given hundreds of thousands in political donations to left-wing MPs.
With the move to restrict the use of Chinese surveillance cameras in government buildings, others have called for restrictions to go further. Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, who serves as the head of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons, said that companies like Hikvision should not be used by any governmental body or local authority throughout the country, for example.
In addition to concerns over spying, Hikvision has been the subject of criticism for its alleged role in oppression of ethnic minorities in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, also known as East Turkestan.
In 2019, the United States Department of Commerce blacklisted Hikvision and 28 other Chinese firms for being “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups.”
The Chinese surveillance equipment firm is one of the largest in the world, valued in the tens of billions. It was paid some 1.85 billion yuan (~£215m/$260m) by the Chinese state in 2017 to install a “social prevention and control system” made up of tens of thousands of cameras in Xinjiang.
Previously, the government’s independent Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Professor Fraser Sampson, warned that Chinese cameras in Britiain have the capability of recording audio in hidden microphones, and can be accessed remotely.
Hikvision has denied that its tech has such powers, saying: “Hikvision cannot transmit data from end-users to third parties, we do not manage end-user databases, nor do we sell cloud storage in the UK. Our cameras are compliant with the applicable UK rules and regulations and are subject to strict security requirements.”
“We have always been fully transparent about our operations in the UK and have been engaging with the UK government to clarify misunderstandings about the company, our business, and address their concerns. We will seek to urgently engage further with ministers to understand this decision,” they claimed.
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