“No public body should be funding companies complicit in Chinese state oppression, nor should they be using systems already blacklisted by the Scottish Government or flagged as security risks by the surveillance watchdog.”
Hear hear, Greer.
He also says: “China’s brutal dictatorship has built an all-encompassing surveillance apparatus, imprisoned two million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, destroyed democracy in Hong Kong and engaged in decades of cultural genocide and human rights abuses in Tibet.”
Judging from what I can gather about the other political views of Member of Scottish Parliament Ross Greer (shown above), we would disagree about many things. But we agree that no governments should be doing business with Chinese surveillance companies “complicit in Chinese state oppression” or using Chinese-made cameras or other tech plausibly “flagged as security risks” (“Communist China CCTV cameras being used by North Ayrshire Council, claims Green MSP Ross Greer,” Daily Record, August 14, 2024).
Same kind of kit
Greer accuses the North Ayrshire Council of “using the same kind of kit which was blacklisted in the USA five years ago due to fears around its role in the targeting of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.”
Via a Freedom of Information request, his political party, the Scottish Green Party, learned that this council uses 77 CCTV cameras made by Hikvision and Dahua.
According to a statement issued by the Greens:
“In 2022, the UK and Scottish Governments, as well as Police Scotland, committed to phasing out the use of Hikvision CCTV cameras due to security concerns. Many councils have not yet followed this move through, and hundreds of the company’s cameras are still used by local councils across the country.
“Other Chinese-owned companies whose products are used include Dahua, as well as Taiwanese-owned Nuuo and US-owned Honeywell, both of which have been accused by the UK Government’s independent watchdog on surveillance of using Chinese components which make them vulnerable to spying by the Beijing regime.”
Working on it
A spokesperson for the North Ayrshire Council says that they’re working on compliance and that procedures are in place to ensure that all “new or replacement systems [comply] with all relevant standards.”
Also that “there are no cameras produced by the manufacturers noted within the council’s extensive public space CCTV network, which meets all industry standards in relation to security and data protection.”
But if they’re not part of its “extensive public space CCTV network,” what are the 77 cameras made by Hikvision and Dahua that the council uses being used for?
