Three-fifths (61%) of public bodies in the UK are using CCTV systems made by Chinese companies that should be “debarred from our procurement supply chains”, according to the campaign group Big Brother Watch. In a consultation submission to the UK Procurement Bill, Big Brother Watch said CCTV systems made by Hikvision and Dahua were in use across schools, colleges, universities, police forces, NHS trusts, and local authorities.
Human rights abuses
According to the consultation paper Chinese state-owned surveillance companies Hikvision and Dahua provide technology that is central to the regime of ethnic persecution of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang and both hold contracts to build and operate surveillance systems in the region. The atrocities inflicted on the Uyghur population are technology-enabled.
National Security
On 24th November 2022, the Government announced it will be removing surveillance equipment manufactured by Chinese state-owned companies from “sensitive sites” within Government departments, in recognition of the risk they pose to national security. This is an important step, but the entirety of the public sector must be afforded the same protections.
The use of these cameras and CCTV systems is widespread across the UK public sector with 73% of local authorities, 60% of NHS trusts, 63% of schools, 66% of colleges and 54% of universities using Chinese-made CCTV; 35% of police forces have Hikvision cameras. More than 10% of public bodies using these CTTV systems had advanced capabilities, including thermal scanning or facial detection.
As the report says, “It is vital that companies, clearly linked to human rights abuses overseas and security risks domestically, should be debarred from our procurement supply chains,”
Clearly our procurement of these systems must stop.
In2 the bargain 