Chinese surveillance camera firm advertises racial profiling technology in UK

Gone are the days when racial profiling was a thing...at least that is how it should be. However, a recent report has revealed that a Chinese security company has been advertising a controversial feature: Ethnicity recognition.

Hikvision has reportedly been touting this feature to its customers in the United Kingdom and other European countries. This is even as the company already faces a ban in the UK over its involvement in ethnic cleansing in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

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The company was also placed on the US blacklist back in 2019, over allegations of human rights violations, and surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

As per a Guardian report, in a brochure on its website the company advertised a range of features like “optional Demographic Profiling Facial analysis algorithms”, including “gender, race/ethnicity, age” profiling. This was allegedlyin collaboration with UK startup FaiceTech.

However, FaiceTech denied ever having worked with Hikvision and said that the document was created without its knowledge and consent. It also sent a legal letter to Hikvision, demanding they remove the brochure since it can deceive the public "that our client (FaiceTech) is in some way associated with Hikvision".

Reportedly, the Hikvision website also cited a second, Italian-based company offering racial profiling in a post that has since been removed.

Guardian reports that the racial profiling posts were removed following an inquiry by the publication and the company said that the technology was never even sold in the UK.

It further claimed that the brochure in question merely details the "potential application of our cameras, with technology built independently by FaiceTech and other partners."

The brochures were reportedly first discovered by Big Brother Watch, a campaign group. The group's legal and policy officer, Madeleine Stone said that "Hikvision’s surveillance products pose a real threat to rights and security. The government must act now to ban this rights-abusing technology."

She also said that such "intrusive surveillance capabilities" have no place in a democracy.

(With inputs from agencies)

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