How Chinese firm linked to repression of Uyghurs aids Israeli surveillance in West Bank [View all]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/11/west-bank-palestinians-surveillance-cameras-hikvision

How Chinese firm linked to repression of Uyghurs aids Israeli surveillance in West Bank

Cameras made by Hikvision, which is blacklisted in US, blanket the occupied West Bank, according to Amnesty International

Johana Bhuiyan
Sat 11 Nov 2023 11.00 EST

In the occupied Palestinian territories, there are cameras everywhere. In Silwan, in occupied East Jerusalem, residents say cameras were installed by Israeli police up and down their streets, peering into their homes. One resident named Sara said she and her family “could be detected as if the cameras were just in our house … we couldn’t feel at home in our own house and had to be fully dressed all the time.”

Surveillance cameras now cover the Damascus Gate, the main entrance into the old city of Jerusalem and one of the only public areas for Palestinians to gather socially and hold demonstrations. It’s at that gate that “Palestinians are being watched and assessed at all times”, according to an Amnesty International report, Automated Apartheid. These cameras have created a chilling effect on not just the ability to protest but also on the daily lives of Palestinians who live under occupation, according to Amnesty investigators. The organization had previously concluded that Israel has established a system of apartheid against Palestinians.

Among the vendors behind these surveillance cameras is a company that has been accused of aiding what the US has categorized as a genocide: Hikvision. Based in Hangzhou, China, the company is one of the world’s largest makers of video surveillance equipment. Already infamous among international human rights groups, it has been blacklisted by the US and identified by the UK as a security threat for being complicit in China’s repression of the Uyghur ethnic minority.

The presence of Hikvision cameras in the West Bank was first revealed in the May report by Amnesty, which documented facial-recognition and surveillance-camera technology that the human rights organization concluded is being used to reinforce Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in an act of “digital repression”. Amnesty surveyed two West Bank neighborhoods, East Jerusalem and Hebron, where Israeli settlers have set up homes in violation of international law, and found that facial-recognition systems “are providing the Israeli authorities with powerful new tools for curbing freedom of movement … adding further layers of technological sophistication to the system of apartheid that Israel is imposing on Palestinians”.

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