News OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This from Maggie Nelmes, Ventnor. Ed
Does a supermarket you know have self-service check-out machines with a large mirror facing you? Did you know that these machines have integral Automated Facial Recognition (AFR) cameras?
My local Coop store had these machines installed a year or two ago. And I wonder how many other supermarkets on the Isle of Wight have had them installed?
According to Big Brother Watch, a UK civil liberties campaign group, the company making these cameras, Hikvision, is a Chinese state company working with the Chinese government to keep the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province imprisoned in inhumane “re-education camps” and monitor them there. Hikvision not only designs cameras to use facial recognition, but also for behaviour analysis and ethnicity detection.
Called out for ‘genocide’
The UK is one of the countries that has accused China of genocide, “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, after receiving reports of the mass sterilization of Uyghur women, the removal of children from their families, and attempts to deny people their cultural traditions.
Yet the UK’s retail giants are not alone in doing business with this Chinese company, lining its pockets, to create a surveillance network to spy on millions of their own customers.
“Dominating the UK’s public sector CCTV networks”
Big Brother Watch’s latest report reveals how Hikvision and another Chinese company, Dahua, “dominate the UK’s public sector CCTV networks”:
“Based on thousands of Freedom-of-Information requests, our new report ‘Who’s Watching You? The dominance of Chinese state-owned CCTV in the UK’ blows the lid off China’s growing surveillance presence in our country. These intrusive, advanced surveillance capabilities are being quietly normalized in the UK. That means, not only is our privacy and security at risk in an increasingly dystopian surveillance state – but British taxpayers’ money is funding companies implicated in genocide and modern slavery in China.”
Cameras in schools, hospitals and on high streets
Hikvision and Dahua have thousands and thousands of cameras in schools, hospitals and on high streets throughout the country.
What is particularly disturbing is the lack of regulation of the use of AFR, only guidelines, thus enabling private companies and public bodies, to exploit it.
And there appears to be increasing concern over the inaccuracy of this particular biometric technology that claims to be able to identify a person by certain facial features, and promotes the use of that identification as evidence to convict them of a crime.
Some good news
There is, however, some good news:
- Many MPs from all the main political parties have signed a pledge, urging the Government to outlaw Chinese state surveillance camera companies.
- Microsoft and Amazon have both decided, for this very reason, to pull out of AFR.
- And Big Brother Watch has managed to persuade supermarket giant Tesco to rip out AFR check-out machines from its stores.
Join the campaign
To join the campaign to persuade other supermarket chains to abandon AFR, follow this link Shops near you using rights-abusing CCTV (mailchi.mp)
And please let us know in the Comments of any supermarkets or other businesses on the Island that are using AFR.
Image: bernard hermant under CC BY 2.0
