US cities and towns purchase AI surveillance kit linked to China's Uyghur abuse Nearly a hundred counties, towns and cities across the US have purchased surveillance cameras from Chinese companies blocked by the federal government over the human rights abuse of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Companies like Hikvision and Dahua were placed on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List back in 2019. Federal …
That was my first thought, but reading the linked article makes it clear that it's actually talking about systems used for taking temperature measurements for Covid screening, not some nefarious surveillance thing. The actual news was that they blew half a million on non-functional cameras because they didn't bother buying the calibration devices to go with them so they could boast about getting them cheaper than other schools.
> privacy laws in the US have to be strengthened to ensure that data is not misused
And a lot, too! In Europe the laws are stronger and yet data is routinely misused, proof that even there laws are not strong enough. Not enough to compel anybody to more than a couple hollow phrases about how important patients' privacy is to them.
...means what, exactly?
A company makes equipment and sells it to numerous customers who use it for diverse activities. Surveillance cameras are widely used (the UK's a pioneer in this technology) so many of the uses will be controversial.
People tend to forget that China's quite large and diverse. Physically its about the size of Europe so its not surprising that its structured into relatively self-governing provinces (there's "32 and a bit" -- Taiwan is listed as #33). In our world we tend to think of the country as homogeneous, as an army of faceless people who all look alike, think alike and who act like puppets blindly following their Bejing puppet masters. This isn't realistic, so the fact that a company in eastern China sells kit to both a government in western China and to local governments in the US isn't surprising, its just 'commerce'.
The Entity List thing is pure politics, BTW. Speaking as an American I can say that the sanctions industry is one of the bright spots in our economy. Nobody seems to quite know how many people are involved in developing, implementing and enforcing sanctions of various sorts against whatever target seems most politically expedient on a particular day.
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