Police in China Can Track Protests By Enabling 'Alarms' on Hikvision Software (theguardian.com) 36
Chinese police can set up "alarms" for various protest activities using a software platform provided by Hikvision, a major Chinese camera and surveillance manufacturer, the Guardian has learned. From the report: Descriptions of protest activity listed among the "alarms" include "gathering crowds to disrupt order in public places," "unlawful assembly, procession, demonstration" and threats to "petition." These activities are listed alongside offenses such as "gambling" or disruptive events such as "fire hazard" in technical documents available on Hikvision's website and flagged to the Guardian by surveillance research firm IPVM, or Internet Protocol Video Market. The company's website also included alarms for "religion" and "Falun Gong" -- a spiritual movement banned in China and categorized as a cult by the government -- until IPVM contacted the company.
The findings come a month after mass protests against the country's zero-Covid policies erupted across China. Though the demonstrations resulted in the government easing restrictions, many protesters later received calls from police. The US government has long had its sights set on Hikvision. The company was placed on a commerce department blacklist that restricts the use of federal funds to purchase equipment manufactured by the firm as well as US exports to the surveillance firm for its complicity in human rights violations associated with China's mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. In November, the Federal Communications Commission also introduced new rules that prohibited imports and sales of future Hikvision communications equipment in the US.
The findings come a month after mass protests against the country's zero-Covid policies erupted across China. Though the demonstrations resulted in the government easing restrictions, many protesters later received calls from police. The US government has long had its sights set on Hikvision. The company was placed on a commerce department blacklist that restricts the use of federal funds to purchase equipment manufactured by the firm as well as US exports to the surveillance firm for its complicity in human rights violations associated with China's mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. In November, the Federal Communications Commission also introduced new rules that prohibited imports and sales of future Hikvision communications equipment in the US.
Re: China is our dystopian future (Score:2)
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We'll go 1984 style and install it ourselves. See Ring and any other products labeled 'smart'.
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Or indeed, the way more intrusive social media apps which monitor all aspects of their users' lives and even help build shadow profiles for non-users.
Alarming Activities (Score:2)
These activities are listed alongside offenses such as "gambling" or disruptive events such as "fire hazard"
IPVM also told the Guardian about an option to detect "dogging" but was unwilling to speculate about its meaning in China.
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Inspired by Amazon. . (Score:3)
How clever (Score:2)
Are people in China trying to protest in secret or something? Doesn't that kind of, you know, defeat the purpose?
Everything is a surprise if you were born yesterda (Score:1, Interesting)
No shit.
The greatest failing of American civil society and the intellectual class is its inability or unwillingness to believe that in other parts of the world, they do things differently.
Here we say we care about human rights, and for the most part the rhetoric matches the reality most of the time. Over there they actually truly don't give a fuck about it, and stuff like melamine in baby formula, spent rocket stages dropping on their own villages, and ricocheting between welding people into their houses an
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The U.S. has a history of violating the rights of marginalized and oppressed groups, including Native Americans, African Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities. The U.S. has a history of supporting dictatorships and authoritarian regimes around the world, and has often prioritized its own interests over the promotion of human rights in other countries.
Especially the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court. This decision violate
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> Whataboutism always works.
Being aware of similar issues is always helpful.
> Overturning Roe v. Wade was a good ruling on many levels.
Technically, maybe, but not without safe guards for abortion rights in place.
> Killing a human being is not a human right. Human brain activity starts at 12 weeks.
Equivocation doesn't make a good argument.
> Calling it healthcare is barbaric.
Abortion is not called health care. But when appropriate it can be useful to categorize it as such.
> If you can devalue t
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Re: Everything is a surprise if you were born yest (Score:1)
Porn is a more dignified way of making money. Even if you're 300 pounds overweight and hideously deformed, someone will pay currency to see you doing things to yourself over a grainy webcam.
They are automatizing policing (Score:4, Insightful)
And they are not the only ones. They are just a bit farther along than some other countries that are deeply scared of free citizens making their own decisions.
I predict this advanced and proven tech will be sold in the US and other unsavory places in no time.
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I thought everyone knew that Western police forces were using this tech already. The UK does, and before it was automated they had people watching banks of monitors.
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Ah. So the outrage is about China being so damn late to the game! What a disgrace. Here they are a totalitarian, anti-democratic regime and they are using this oppression tech only after the UK and others have put it in place. What a failure.
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The UK has tech that lets them remotely access all private cameras hooked up to the internet in an area instantly? Interesting.
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you have Android or Apple phone ? location "awareness" by the phone is VERY hard to be disabled
you can buy a degoogled phone ..... still android but with no tracking (hopefully)
Appropriately named, I guess (Score:2)
Because carefully monitoring hicks, bumpkins, and rednecks is exactly what the U.S. government has always wanted to do.
hit piece (Score:2)
I'm not defending china or hikvision, but this sort of detection and others is all the rage across essentially all camera brands and VMS softwares. Hikvision isn't a notable stand out. And the US is already doing this all over the place.
Do I get this right? (Score:2)
Re: Do I get this right? (Score:1)
most domestic and business cameras are pointed to at their own property and have a short line of sight maybe 30m at most. they would make poor detectors of protests. better would be to use traffic cameras which are not only high high up and have a huge unobstructed view, they're all linked up and you know exactly where each one is too know where the priest is. so your domestic/business camera being used to detect protests is doubtful when there's a much better and easier way to do it.
Re: Do I get this right? (Score:2)
Hikvision has "Ethnic Sensing" software (Score:3)
Hikvision also has "Ethnic Sensing" software that claims to detect various ethnicity categories:
"The brochure also advertised “Optional Demographic Profiling Facial analysis algorithms”, including “gender, race/ethnicity, age” profiling. A second, Italian-based, company was also cited on Hikvision’s website as offering racial profiling."
And...
The PRC officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups, which the Chinese ambassador recently described as being 'part of big family of Chinese nation'.
However, Hikvision's analytics only categorizes 2 of those ethnic groups - the largest and the most persecuted.
Han people are the largest ethnic group in the PRC, making up over 90% of the country's population, i.e., what most outside China calls "Chinese people".
Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim people primarily in the Xinjiang region of China. In recent years, the PRC has sent an estimated 1 million Uyghurs into "re-education camps" and built a highly intrusive surveillance state in the region.
"Police." LOL (Score:2)