China surveillance tech seeks to go global
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this: China surveillance tech seeks to go global
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Villepinte (France) (AFP) - Chinese firms are omnipresent at a
Paris homeland security trade show, capitalising on their vast experience in
developing surveillance systems for Beijing to conquer the global market
despite concerns the technology has been used to violate human rights.
With
89 out of 1,100 companies demonstrating their wares at the Milipol security
trade fair, China is the best represented of the 53 nations present save for
host nation France.
But
contrary to weapons and ammunition on display at other stands, Chinese firms
offer non-lethal equipment: helmets, bullet-proof vests and tactical clothing
for special forces or riot troops. Jamming equipment. And cameras, lots of
cameras.
China
is known for its heavy police surveillance, with market research firm IHS
Markit estimating it has already deployed 176 million cameras to monitor public
spaces across the country.
That
number is expected to expand to 2.76 billion, or nearly two for each citizen,
by 2022.
Coupled
with facial recognition technology, in which China is also a world leader, the
surveillance network is an important element of Chinese efforts to control its
population.
Concerns
about the system appear to be well placed.
According
to a trove of government documents released by the New York Times recently the
surveillance system was used against China's Uighur minority as part of a
crackdown in Xinjiang.
Human
rights groups and outside experts say more than one million Uighurs and other
mostly Muslim minorities have been rounded up in a network of internment camps
across the fractious region.
Beijing,
after initially denying the camps existed, now describes them as vocational
schools aimed at dampening the allure of Islamist extremism and violence through
education and job training.
China's
involvement in the tech fair has stirred controversy in the past.
Organisers
closed the stand of one Chinese firm at the previous fair in 2017 after human
rights campaigners from Amnesty International called them out for allowing it
to display handcuffs that deliver electric shocks and other equipment that
could be considered torture instruments that are banned in the EU.
The
stand of Hytera Communications Corporation sports communications gear that
integrate images from body cameras to smartphones equipped with big antennas.
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