Is Big Brother Britain About to Become the World's Ultimate Surveillance State?

[mountaineer]

Daily Mail

It looks like a street lamp in a leafy London road... but this is actually a Chinese-made facial recognition camera - one of millions of sinister-looking CCTV cameras quietly installed across Britain in recent months

    Cameras made by a chinese-state affiliated company have been installed
    They are equipped with facial recognition and are used in totalitarian regimes
    The company, Dahua, has a track record of severe cybersecurity vulnerabilities

By Sian Boyle For The Daily Mail Investigations Unit
Published: 19:44 EDT, 4 September 2022 | Updated: 05:23 EDT, 5 September 2022

With its imposing red brick houses, neat gardens and red postbox, Baskerville Road in the borough of Wandsworth is a classic example of family residences in the more affluent areas of London.

But something is amiss. Just outside a house on the corner, which happens to be the former home of World War I-era prime minister David Lloyd George, is a new piece of infrastructure that would seem more suited to the perimeter of a maximum security prison or a detention camp.

It is a disturbingly anthropomorphic CCTV camera, with two lenses that resemble eyes and two other indeterminate features that serve as the nose and mouth; and it hangs from a pole ringed with spikes to protect its hardware from would-be thieves or vandals. ...

For the strange white cameras are just two of millions which have quietly been installed throughout Britain in recent months.

Made by Dahua, a Chinese state-affiliated company, they are equipped with controversial facial recognition software — a means of monitoring and controlling populations much favoured by Beijing and other totalitarian regimes around the world.

There are other causes for concern: Dahua has a track record of severe cybersecurity vulnerabilities that have already led to mass hacks of its cameras, and the company itself admitted last year that there is ‘very high potential’ for other such incidents.

The company has also been implicated in human rights abuses conducted by the Chinese government, with the facial recognition capabilities of its cameras used to pick out in crowds anyone with the distinctive features of a Uyghur Muslim — a persecuted ethnic minority in China — to alert police so the individuals can be rounded up. ...

In contrast to the UK, the U.S. has banned cameras made by Dahua and Hikvision due to the security risks they pose. The companies deny this, and Hikvision has previously commented that it is ‘committed to upholding the right to privacy and protecting people and property’. ...