Chinese surveillance giant Dahua has once again drawn the ire of federal officials following a report that it has developed intentionally discriminatory analytics software.
According to a report first published by IPVM, a software development kit published by Dahua on its website included code that could be used by Chinese authorities to track Uyghurs, a minority ethnic group, leveraging its facial recognition analytics.
On Wednesday, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) sent a letter to outgoing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asking him to provide details about the e-commerce leader’s business dealings with the company. Last April, Amazon reportedly purchased 1,500 thermal cameras from Dahua to help the company monitor the temperature of workers amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in a deal valued at approximately $10 million.
“These reports are extremely disturbing, and show that the comprehensive surveillance system that Chinese authorities have deployed against the Uyghurs is just as bad as we had feared, if not worse,” the Senators wrote in the letter.
The senators also raised questions concerning Bezos’ awareness of Dahua’s status on the Commerce Department’s Entity List when Amazon entered into negotiations for the thermal camera purchase as well as what the company’s criteria is in determining when to terminate a business relationship with an entity that engages in alleged human rights violations.
“While buying equipment from Dahua Technology is not illegal, it does raise several questions for you as the Chief Executive of Amazon,” the Senators added. “If these allegations against Dahua are true, it would mean that Amazon willfully ignored guidance from the United States government and purchased equipment from an entity-listed company that is complicit in China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs.”
For its part, Dahua said the documents referenced in the IPVM report were “historical internal software design documents” and that it “will not provide the features or applications in the software products in the future.”
Here is Dahua’s statement in its entirety:
1. Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd. (“Dahua” or “Company”) only provides generic video technology products in the regional markets reported by the media, and does not provide products and services for ethnicity detection in such regional markets.
2. In recent years, Dahua has been increasing its investment in the commercial market. The proportion of such commercial market in the Company’s total sales profile has also been increasing. Dahua’s total sales in the relevant regional markets reported by certain media in the past 5 years are far lower than the amount alleged in such media reports and have been declining rapidly on a yearly basis.
3. Based on the Company’s internal review, the relevant documents reported by certain media are historical internal software design documents. Dahua will not provide the features or applications in the software products in the future. Dahua will conduct a rigorous internal review and strengthen the design review process and management of the Company’s Research and Development functions.
A spokesperson for Dahua declined to comment further on the matter and referred SecurityInfoWatch.com to the statement above.
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
