China's Powerful Surveillance State Has Created at Least Four Billionaires

Tiandy’s Dai Lin is China’s latest surveillance billionaire

By Blake Schmidt and Venus Feng
Before he became a billionaire, Dai Lin would ride his bike to work, pedaling through the streets of Tianjin to the headquarters of Tiandy Technologies Co., the camera maker he built with support from China’s government.
When Dai started his company in 1994, roadside surveillance cameras were rare in China. 

Now they’re everywhere -- part of a high-tech surveillance state that’s stoking privacy and human-rights concerns in the world’s most populous nation, raising thorny questions for international investors, and making well-connected entrepreneurs like Dai extremely rich.
The 54-year-old former academic, who now drives a luxury sedan and rewards high-performing employees with BMWs, is the latest of at least four businessmen to amass billion-dollar-plus fortunes from surveillance companies that count China’s government as a major client or investor. 

Their combined net worth exceeds $12 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Big Brother Billionaires
The figure underscores the scale of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s unprecedented push to keep tabs on the country’s 1.4 billion people. 

About 176 million video surveillance cameras monitored China’s streets, buildings and public spaces in 2016, versus 50 million in America, according to IHS Markit. 

In 2017, Xi’s government spent an estimated $184 billion on domestic security. 

By 2020, authorities plan to roll out an “omnipresent’’ nationwide camera network and a social-credit system that tracks personal data on everything from traffic violations to video-game habits. 

It will soon be hard to go anywhere in Tianjin, or any other city in China, without being watched.

Surveillance cameras on a street in Tianjin.

And it’s not just surveillance-focused firms like Tiandy that are helping the government expand its monitoring programs: companies from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Ping An Insurance Group Co. to Tencent Holdings Ltd. are playing increasingly important roles. 

Look hard enough, and you’ll find links to China’s surveillance state at nearly all of the nation’s most innovative businesses -- several of which are staples of 401(k) accounts and other investment portfolios around the world.

Critics, including billionaire philanthropist George Soros, say Xi’s government is exploiting technology to gain a dangerous level of control over its citizenry. 

That concern has only grown in recent months amid reports on the suppression of Uighurs, the predominately Muslim ethnic groups in China’s East Turkestan colony.

Facial-recognition technology is demonstrated on a screen at Tiandy’s headquarters in Tianjin.

As Tiandy and its peers expand overseas, China’s surveillance industry helps governments from Africa to Latin America erode civil liberties. 

Another fear, highlighted by U.S. scrutiny of Huawei Technologies Co., is that exported Chinese surveillance equipment could be used by Beijing for spying. 

Huawei’s HiSilicon unit is a major supplier of chips that power surveillance cameras.
“The Chinese government’s approach to leveraging data for purposes of social control and management could bolster the coercive capability of the state in ways that have quite troubling implications, including for the future of democratic governance worldwide,’’ said Elsa Kania, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. 

“Many of the companies that are exporting AI applications, such as facial recognition, can be used for surveillance and thus enable repression.”

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has denied helping Beijing spy.
Tiandy, whose name-and-shame surveillance systems in Tianjin identify jaywalkers and display their faces on street-side billboards, declined to comment on Dai’s net worth or the privacy issues surrounding China’s monitoring programs.

A roadside billboard displays jaywalkers caught by Tiandy’s surveillance system in Tianjin.

Wuhan Guide Infrared Co., a maker of infrared cameras whose chairman has a net worth of $1.3 billion, and Ping An, which develops smart sensing technology for local governments, both declined to comment.
Tencent, which has invested in surveillance-related startups, didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Alibaba’s cloud-computing unit said authorities using its “City Brain” technology have seen “tangible improvement in areas such as traffic flow and emergency response time.”
For all the concerns about government surveillance raised by Soros and groups like the United Nations, views from inside China are often more apathetic.
Older residents have long been accustomed to living under the watchful eye of the Communist Party, and younger generations have grown up sharing nearly every aspect of their lives on social media.
While there have been sporadic outcries over data-gathering overreach, Chinese are willing to sacrifice some of their privacy as long as China’s leaders keep delivering on promises of higher incomes and strong economic growth.
Proponents of the country’s social-credit system, which is being tested in several cities before a planned national rollout in 2020, say it promotes honest dealings in a country whose legal system has often failed to build trust among consumers and businesses.
People with high social-credit scores may find it easier under the new regime to buy plane tickets, borrow money, purchase a house and secure a high-paying job.

Surveillance system used to monitor the rooms during the College Entrance Examination in Chongqing in June 2018.

The fear is that China’s government, and the businesses that supply it with surveillance and censorship technology, are also building a system that’s capable of stifling dissent like never before.
In East Turkestan -- where as many as 1 million Uighurs have been held in mass detention camps -- Chinese authorities are deploying AI-powered cameras, facial scanners and audio surveillance tools to carry out what Human Rights Watch has described as a “systematic campaign of human rights violations.’’ 
China has said that the camps are "voluntary" education centers that help purge “ideological diseases.”
Human Rights Watch has called out companies including iFlyTek Co., a Shenzhen-listed developer of voice-recognition technology, and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a Massachusetts-based maker of DNA sequencers, for supplying the East Turkestan police.
The advocacy group has also urged money managers to refrain from investing in businesses with links to China’s mass surveillance programs. (iFlyTek and several of its peers, such as Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., are components of MSCI Inc.’s global benchmark stock indexes.)
U.S. politicians are applying pressure too.
In August, a bipartisan group of American lawmakers urged the White House to punish businesses including Hikvision and Dahua, two of China’s biggest surveillance camera makers, for facilitating human rights abuses in East Turkestan. 
Both companies are already barred from supplying the U.S. government.

Security cameras are installed near a mosque in Kashgar, East Turkestan colony.

There’s a “deep sense of unease” about Chinese surveillance among Western observers, many of whom have become increasingly sensitive to potential privacy abuses in the wake of controversies involving big technology companies like Facebook Inc., said Shoshana Zuboff, an emerita professor at Harvard Business School whose book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” includes a section on China.
Dahua and iFlytek didn’t respond to requests for comment.
MSCI said its stock indexes are designed to represent the “investment opportunity set” without making “subjective" assessments of constituent companies.
Thermo Fisher said in a statement this week that it has decided to stop sales of DNA identification technology in East Turkestan.
While the backlash over East Turkestan may curb sales of Chinese surveillance products in the U.S., demand at home and in many emerging markets is still growing rapidly enough to spawn a new generation of surveillance startups.

SenseTime’s pedestrian and vehicle recognition system.

Among the most successful is SenseTime, a leader in facial-recognition technology that earns about two-fifths of its revenue from government contracts.
The four-year-old company -- a member of China’s “AI National Team” -- was recently valued at more than $4.5 billion, making it one of the world’s biggest AI startups.
In a response to questions from Bloomberg, the company said most of its revenue comes from areas outside government surveillance, such as autonomous driving and augmented-reality technology.
China’s more established tech companies, some of which have long helped the government monitor and censor the internet, are increasing their ties to the surveillance state.
Baidu, billionaire Robin Li’s online search company, is working with Chinese authorities to provide “smart city’’ services, including cloud storage systems that can analyze surveillance-related data. Tencent and Alibaba, the e-commerce giant founded by billionaire Jack Ma, are participating in similar projects.
Tiandy, whose cameras can capture high-definition color images in lighting conditions equivalent to a night sky with one star, is a prime example of the Chinese surveillance industry’s growing overseas reach.
The company now sells to more than 60 countries -- a tally that may rise thanks in part to Xi’s “Belt and Road” global infrastructure initiative.
That’s good news for Tiandy and its billionaire founder, but may add to concerns among privacy and political rights activists that China is exporting its surveillance state around the world.
Recent visitors to Tiandy’s headquarters include the president of Angola, an oil-producing nation in southern Africa with one of the lowest rankings in Freedom House’s global survey of civil liberties.
One of the few countries with an even lower Freedom House score? China.

China's Huawei spy risks threaten U.S. diplomacy abroad

By Hollie McKay

Chinese tech criminal Huawei violated US sanctions and stole trade secrets: The Department of Justice

For months, American officials have been warning the Chinese telecommunications giant is obligated to their government and has the capacity – through its developing 5G network – to spy on people in countries where its technology exists.
But the issue has spawned into more than just a spy story – and now challenges Washington’s relations with European partners. 

On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cautioned that the U.S. would not be able to team up with, nor share, crucial intelligence information that countries that go forth in enabling Huawei Technologies.
“Whether through classic economic espionage, intellectual property theft, or espionage on behalf of a government, the global footprint and technology reach of Huawei easily makes it a security risk to U.S. interests,” Erik Rasmussen, Head of Cybersecurity and Risk Management Solutions at public accounting firm Grobstein Teeple, told Fox News. 

“Given the size of the company, it is a difficult undertaking to quickly and swiftly track spying with or without Huawei’s knowledge, but direct influence on business operations by the Chinese government is undeniable.”
U.S authorities have expressed a growing concern the telecom conglomerate could – as a result of 2017 legislation in China that permits the government to keep tabs on people under the guise of national security – undertake “undetected espionage” on users.
The 2017 legislation mandates all China-owned companies must comply with the government’s intelligence wing should it be requested, meaning that if Huawei is asked to do so and denies to so, they could be breaking their own national security laws.
The issue has not only caused a schism in U.S. relations with Canada – who have conveyed frustration in having absorbed retaliation from the Chinese government for detaining the company’s CFO Meng Wanzhou on an extradition request by the U.S – but threatens alliances with Europe too.

In this courtroom sketch, Meng Wanzhou, right, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, sits beside a translator during a bail hearing at British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver, on Friday, Dec. 7, 2018. Meng faces extradition to the U.S. on charges of trying to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. She appeared in a Vancouver court Friday to seek bail. 

Germany this week made the preliminary determination to continue to the process in allowing Huawei to partake in developing their high-speed internet infrastructure after their own investigation found no sufficient proof its equipment could be used to spy. 

Britain is currently examining the tech giant’s products, and is expected to make a decision in the coming weeks.
Over the past year, the Trump team has been ramping up pressure on its European allies to drastically limit or entirely rebuff Huawei’s involvement in both developing the 5G infrastructure and its presence on existing networks. 

While Huawei has mostly been barred in the United States, its foothold in Europe is strong.
“Next to Apple and Samsung, Huawei is the world’s largest mobile technology company in terms of market share, so if the company is compromised from within, the risk is undeniable,” Rasmussen said. 

“Given the historical alliances between the US and many European countries where Huawei technology is common, there is a vested interest to track this accordingly and share information when prudent. The UK and Germany will naturally have to weigh the costs and benefits to allowing risky technology in their country.”

However, the Huawei president and former Chinese army engineer Ren Zhengfei – whose daughter Meng Wanzhou has been held Canadian authorities for almost three months awaiting possible extradition – continues to deny that the company assists the Chinese government in collecting intelligence through its devices. 

The Chinese government has also refuted U.S. accusations that they have the capacity to funnel off personal data and information.
Experts and analysts remain far from convinced.
“If these pieces of electronic equipment used in telecom infrastructure are compromised – for example, by having hidden backdoors, which allow for access with specific access codes – this would enable Chinese intelligence to have access to western telecoms networks, ‘sniffing’ and listening to all information such as data and voice going through that equipment,” explained J. Eduardo Campos, Chief Information Security Specialist and founder of Embedded-Knowledge Inc. 

“Huawei denies it vehemently, but given the recent history of State-sponsored hacking by the Chinese government, it makes anyone suspicious. Moreover, Chinese tech companies could be compelled by the Chinese government to modify their technology for spying purposes. And we would never know it.”
According to Campos, the 5G technology – the next iteration of mobile network technology – could potentially help cities become smarter, improving traffic management, citizen services, and access to public information from mobile devices. 

Therefore, it will enable many types of cutting-edge applications, such as self-driving cars and remotely operated devices.
“They will be able to send and receive large amounts of data faster than it is currently possible. 

One way of seeing a potential threat is that an increased reliance on mobile technologies means its disruption would have serious consequences, both in terms of safety as well as the country’s economy,” he observed. 

“Imagine that a failure because a remote hacking by a foreign power could lead to the death of patients, the crash of self-driving cars, or even just halting down airplanes on the ground because of massive system outages. This poses real national security risks. The US government has all rights to crack down on this and at least demand extra measures to protect the infrastructure against companies that operate too close to foreign powers not aligned with the US, such as Huawei technologies.”
Meanwhile, the White House has been urging Western technology companies to get up to speed with their Chinese counterparts in mastering the 5G modal.
“The Trump Administration is in the tough position of balancing free market principles with national and cybersecurity. The President and his advisors are tasked with regulatory oversight of 5G implementation, and they understand that this new technology has revolutionary capabilities in terms of innovation and economic growth,” added Theresa Payton, Former White House Chief Information Officer under George W. Bush and current CEO of security consulting company, Fortalice Solutions. 

“But the key is to strike a balance between a successful 5G rollout that spawns economic growth and a safe and secure rollout that doesn't give bad actors and nation states unwarranted access to private or sensitive information."

China's Crimes Against Humanity

Biotech Giant Thermo Fisher Stops Selling DNA Sequencers in Repressive Chinese Colony

By DAVID MEYER

The Massachusetts biotechnology giant Thermo Fisher Scientific has decided to stop selling genetic sequencing equipment in the Chinese colony of East Turkestan, where the authorities have for years been persecuting the local Muslim population.
East Turkestan is the main home of China’s Uighur minority—a Turkic group that is primarily Muslim. 

As many as a million Uighurs have been interned in “re-education” camps.

Heavy surveillance is commonplace in the oil-rich region, with cameras everywhere and people forced to install spyware on their smartphones.
Part of the surveillance effort is the collection not only of biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, but also DNA, as part of a "health" program. 

A database is being compiled of every person’s genetic information, not just that of criminal suspects.
Human Rights Watch said in late 2017 that Thermo Fisher was supplying some of the DNA sequencers for this project. 

The NGO confronted the company, only to be told that “it is not possible for us to monitor the use or application of all products we manufactured.”
Since then, however, U.S. politicians got involved, in particular Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who pushed for a crackdown on the use of American technology in human rights violations by the Chinese.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported Thermo Fisher as saying it had taken account of “fact-specific assessments,” and that it recognizes “the importance of considering how our products and services are used—or may be used—by our customers.”
The manufacturers of DNA sequencers are mostly based in the U.S., with a couple coming from Europe and one notable new entrant to the market—BGI—being Chinese. 

BGI was reportedly set up with state support.
On a related note, the World Health Organization last week announced a new committee that will write guidelines for human genome editing. 

The decision comes after Chinese scientist He Jiankui last year claimed to have used DNA editing to produce HIV-resistant twins—the first babies in the world to have edited genes.

China's Crimes Against Humanity

Uighur Australian's plea to save his family from China

BBC News

China is imprisoning Uighurs on a mass scale
An ethnically Uighur Australian has called on his government to help save his wife and baby son, saying they are at risk of being detained in China.
The man says he was separated from his wife, a Chinese national, in 2017 -- when she was banned from leaving China.
He has since obtained Australian citizenship for his 18-month-old son, whom he has never met.
Australia says it is providing consular help. 

Rights groups have accused China of persecuting its Muslim minorities.
Last year, the UN heard that up to one million Uighur Muslims were held in camps in China's East Turkestan colony, where they're said to be undergoing "re-education" programmes.
Beijing has previously denied the existence of such camps.

'My baby is Australian'
The 28-year-old man, who lives in Sydney and does not wish to be named, said his wife had been briefly detained in East Turkestan last year. 

She was released because she was nursing their son, he said.
He said he feared that if she was returned to the camps, his son would be placed in state care and potentially adopted by another family.
"My baby is Australian. So I am really hoping officials can do something to bring him here," he told the BBC.

Uighur communities around the world have protested against China's treatment
He said he had only seen his son in pictures, and feared that communicating with his wife could antagonise Chinese authorities.
His lawyer, Michael Bradley, said: "His anxiety is continuous because of the fragility of the situation in East Turkestan for Uighurs. There is an ever-present threat of removal."
Human Rights Watch says Uighur people in particular are subject to intense surveillance in China, and are made to give DNA and biometric samples.

Citizenship dilemma
Mr Bradley said Australian officials had told his client that it would be impossible to bring his wife to Sydney because she did not have Australian citizenship.
The pair were childhood sweethearts who married in East Turkestan in 2016 after the man had sought asylum in Australia and spent years living there, Buzzfeed News reported.
When asked about the case on Tuesday, the Australian government said it was providing consular assistance to "an Australian man whose family are in China", adding it could not give further details for privacy reasons.
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokeswoman said they were aware of "a number of cases" of people in Australia being unable to contact friends and relatives in East Turkestan.
"Australia is concerned about the human rights situation in East Turkestan, and continues to urge China to cease the arbitrary detention of Uighurs and other Muslim groups," the spokeswoman said.
Australia and other nations have previously raised similar concerns.
In recent times, Uighurs in Australia have also made allegations of being harassed and pressured by Chinese authorities.
Last year, Australian officials confirmed that three citizens had been detained and released from camps in East Turkestan, however Uighur advocates believe the number is much higher.

Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Accuses ‘I Love You, Berlin’ Producers of Censorship

By PATRICK FRATER and ED MEZA

The executive producer of anthology film “Berlin, I Love You” is engaged in a war of words with Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, whose contribution to the movie was left on the cutting-room floor.
The segment Ai shot for “Berlin, I Love You” was axed by the producers for political reasons, out of fear of upsetting Chinese officials. 

But Emmanuel Benbihy, the film’s Shanghai-based executive producer, says that Ai’s segment did not meet the Chinese requirements for inclusion.
“Berlin, I Love You,” whose short takes feature such stars as Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley, was submitted to the Berlin Film Festival but failed to land a slot, even out of competition or in one of the fest’s sidebars. 

Instead, it began its commercial career with a Feb. 8 theatrical release, handled by Saban Films, in the U.S.
To Ai’s surprise, the finished picture left out the segment he shot in 2015, long before contributions from Peter Chelsom, Til Schweiger and nine others went before the cameras. 

Ai directed his piece remotely, issuing instructions by video-call, while under house arrest in China, to Claus Clausen, the Germany-based producer of the film, who co-directed. (Ai later relocated permanently to Berlin.) 

The segment focuses on a boy, played by Ai’s son, who discovers a new city and uses unreliable technology to keep in touch with his distant father.
Clausen cited pressure from distributors uncomfortable with Ai’s inclusion as the reason for the segment’s omission. 

“It was because some of the distributors told us, ‘No,’” Clausen said Wednesday, declining to name the companies.
The decision to pull Ai’s segment was made in order “to show the movie,” Clausen added. 

“That’s what made my heart really bleed. I had an obligation to the other directors and to the other actors. We would have had problems getting the movie out there worldwide….It was a no-win situation for me no matter which way we went. I fought for it till the last moment.”

The rules of the “Cities of Love” franchise give directors final cut of their own segment, but the final say over the film’s lineup rests with the producers.

Benbihy confirmed that the decision to leave out Ai’s offering was made only recently – years after Ai submitted his work. 

In a stream of criticism on Twitter, Ai makes clear his belief that political censorship, or self-censorship, was at work. 

“Chinese movie censorship: Ai Weiwei, Zhang Yimou withdrawals suggest it reaches beyond borders,” he said in one tweet, referring to the last-minute cancellation of the premiere of Zhang’s “One Second” at the Berlinale.
“If someone like Zhang Yimou is facing this problem, if someone like me faces this kind of dramatic situation. Think about the young artist…[China] would lose a whole generation’s imagination, courage, and their passion for art,” Ai said in another tweet.
He retweeted other commentators’ suggestions that his omission from “Berlin, I Love You” was motivated by Benbihy’s desire to remain in the Chinese government’s good graces and to make a “Cities of Love” installment about Shanghai. 

According to IMDb, Benbihy previously tried to launch “Shanghai, I Love You” as far back as 2007, but the project has largely lain dormant since 2009.
Benbihy acknowledged plans to revive plans for “Shanghai, I Love You” this year. 

“Nothing [is] happening on the Shanghai movie yet,” he said. 

“We are working on the strategy and the budget. Not on the financing.”

Rogue Nation

Exposed database on East Turkestan using facial recognition tech shows depth of China's surveillance state
AP

Residents pass by a security checkpoint and surveillance cameras mounted on a street in Kashgar in western China's East Turkestan colony in 2017. The Chinese database Victor Gevers found online was not just a collection of old personal details. The discovery by Gevers, a Dutch cybersecurity researcher who revealed it on Twitter last week, has given a rare glimpse into China's extensive surveillance of East Turkestan. 

BEIJING - The Chinese database Victor Gevers found online was not just a collection of old personal details.
It was a compilation of real-time data on more than 2.5 million people in western China, updated constantly with GPS coordinates of their precise whereabouts. 

Alongside their names, birth dates and places of employment, there were notes on the places that they had most recently visited — mosque, hotel, restaurant.
The discovery by Gevers, a Dutch cybersecurity researcher who revealed it on Twitter last week, has given a rare glimpse into China’s extensive surveillance of East Turkestan, a remote region home to an ethnic minority population that is largely Muslim. 

The area has been blanketed with police checkpoints and security cameras that are doing more than just recording what happens.
The database Gevers found appears to have been recording people’s movements tracked by facial recognition technology, logging more than 6.7 million coordinates in a span of 24 hours.
It illustrates how far China has taken facial recognition — in ways that would raise alarms about privacy concerns in many other countries — and serves as a reminder of how easily technology companies can leave supposedly private records exposed to global snoopers.
Gevers found that SenseNets, a Chinese facial recognition company, had left the database unprotected for months, exposing people’s addresses, government ID numbers and more. 

After Gevers informed SenseNets of the leak, he said, the database became inaccessible.
“This system was open to the entire world, and anyone had full access to the data,” said Gevers, noting that a system designed to maintain control over individuals could have been “corrupted by a 12-year-old.”
He said it included the coordinates of places where the individuals had recently been spotted by “trackers” — likely to be surveillance cameras. 

The stream indicated that the data is constantly being updated with information on people’s whereabouts, he said in an interview over a messaging app.
Gevers posted a graph online showing that 54.9 percent of the individuals in the database were identified as Han Chinese, the country’s ethnic majority, while 28.3 percent were Uighur and 8.3 percent were Kazakh, both Muslim ethnic minority groups.
A person who answered the phone at SenseNets declined a request for comment. 

The East Turkestan regional government did not respond to faxed questions.
East Turkestan, which borders Central Asia in China’s far west, has been subject to severe security measures in recent years.
The U.S. and other countries have condemned the crackdown, in which 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in Chinese concentration camps.
Gulzia, an ethnic Kazakh woman who didn’t want her last name used out of fear of retribution, said that cameras were being installed everywhere, even in cemeteries, in late 2017. 

Now living across the border in Kazakhstan, she told The Associated Press by phone on Monday that she had been confined to house arrest in China and taken to a police station, where they photographed her face and eyes and collected samples of her voice and fingerprints.
“This can be used instead of your ID card to identify you in the future,” she said they told her. 

“Even if you get into an accident abroad, we’ll recognize you.”
The security clampdown is far heavier in East Turkestan than in most parts of China, though outside analysts and human rights activists have expressed concern that East Turkestan may be a testing ground for techniques that may be creeping into other parts of the country.
Joseph Atick, a pioneer in facial recognition technology, said that facial recognition products can use algorithms to recognize and track people in a crowd, but that privacy regulations in Europe, for example, make it much harder to launch a wide-scale application such as that of SenseNets.
“The technology around the world is becoming uniform and it is just the political climate that is different and leads to different applications,” he said.
According to a company registry, SenseNets was founded in the southern China city of Shenzhen in 2015 and is majority-owned by Beijing-based NetPosa, a technology company specializing in video surveillance. 

SenseNets’ website showcases partnerships with police forces in Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces and the city of Shanghai.
A promotional video boasts about SenseNets’ capacity to use facial and body recognition to track individuals’ precise movements and identify them even in a crowded or chaotic setting. 

Another video on its website shows surveillance cameras zeroing in on the path of a runaway prisoner who ends up in an ailing relative’s hospital room.
NetPosa’s website says it has offices in Boston and Santa Clara, California. 

The website of NetPosa’s U.S. subsidiary touts its products’ use in urban "anti-terrorism".
In recent years, NetPosa has been buying stakes in American surveillance startups such as Knightscope, a security robot maker. 

In 2017, NetPosa tried to buy the now-bankrupt California surveillance camera maker Arecont, but later backed out, court records show.
In 2010 U.S. chip maker Intel announced a strategic partnership with NetPosa and an Intel subsidiary bought a stake in the company, but NetPosa said in 2015 that Intel had notified the Chinese company of its intent to divest its 4.4 percent stake by 2016.
Gevers said his discovery of the database presented an ethical dilemma. 

He is the co-founder of GDI Foundation, a Netherlands-based nonprofit that finds and informs entities of online security issues. 

He has become well-known in recent years for helping to uncover similarly exposed information on databases built with the open source MongoDB database program and left unsecured by their administrators.
GDI generally reports such discoveries to the entity that holds the information. 

Part of its mission is to remain neutral and not engage in political controversies.
Hours after he revealed his findings on Twitter, Gevers said, he learned that the system is used to surveil East Turkestan’s Muslim minority groups.
He said that made him “very angry.”
“I could have destroyed that database with one command,” he said. 

“But I choose not to play judge and executioner because it is not my place to do so.”

UK vulnerable to Chinese interference, report says

It would be naive and irresponsible to allow Huawei to access the UK's telecommunications system.
By Gordon Corera

Huawei threat

The report, written by Charles Parton, a former British diplomat, said that Huawei install a hidden backdoor, giving the Chinese government access to the system.

The UK is vulnerable to Chinese influence and interference, according to a defence and security think tank.
A report from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) said it would be naive and irresponsible to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to access the UK's telecommunications system.
The UK is currently reviewing whether to allow the company to build new 5G phone networks.

The report, written by Charles Parton, a former British diplomat who spent most of his 30 year career working on China, said that if Huawei was allowed to participate in the rollout of the new 5G mobile networks it could install a "hidden backdoor", giving the Chinese government access to the system.
It also warned of the risk of interference in other areas including academia, politics and technology.
While there has been "widespread debate" about Chinese interference in countries such as the US and Australia, Mr Parton told the BBC that the UK's response had been characterised by "silence".
"We need it out in the open," he said.
The report describes how the Chinese Communist Party has tried to place its people as advisers to Western politicians.
It also highlights what it calls "elite capture" -- the appointment of former politicians, civil servants and businessmen to lucrative jobs after they leave office in which they promote Chinese interests.

University interference
Mr Parton admitted that distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate interference was a challenge. 

"It's a spectrum," he said.
While Russia seeks simply to disrupt, China, he said, primarily seeks to maintain the legitimacy of Communist Party rule in the country and limit dissent against it, as well as build support for its policies overseas.
"In many fields of interference what lies behind it is Chinese funding and that creates dependencies and either the overt threat or perhaps even just the fear that funding would be jeopardised," Mr Parton said.
He argued this can lead to self-censorship, for instance in academia.

Theresa May held trade talks with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on a visit to Beijing last year

Prof Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute at the University of London, told the BBC he was aware of cases of Chinese pressure on other UK universities.
"In one Russell Group University a pro-vice chancellor was spoken to by someone in the Chinese embassy and as a result he stood a speaker who was already invited down," Prof Tsang said.
"I am also aware of a vice-chancellor again under pressure from the Chinese embassy asking one of his senior academics not to make political comments on China at a specified period of time."
Prof Tsang said it was hard to know how widespread the problem is since academics are cautious about speaking out.
Mr Parton argued there needs to be more transparency about Chinese influence and especially funding when it comes to universities, think tanks and public life.
There has been a shift in recent years in the UK's posture towards China, according to former national security officials.
Under David Cameron -- who now works for a China investment fund -- and his Chancellor George Osborne, economics tended to trump security and values, whereas under Theresa May, the balance has shifted back towards security.
China itself is also evolving under Xi Jinping, with the potential for greater divergence over values.
And under President Donald Trump, the US-China dispute has raised the temperature, with Washington also putting pressure on allies over the role Huawei in their infrastructure.
The imminent approach of Brexit potentially complicates the issue since it could lead to the UK looking towards China more for trade and investment.
But Mr Parton argued there was no reason relations cannot still be strong if they are based on clarity of the boundaries of what constitutes unacceptable interference.
"We need to be mature about our relationship," Mr Parton said.
"In this whole Chinese Communist Party interference debate let's not lose sight of the fact that it is very much in our interest to build up good relations with China -- just realistic ones."