Article
A U.S. Tie to Surveillance Push in Chinese Cities
As the Chinese government forges ahead on...[an] effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital,…founded by Mitt Romney. In December, a Bain-run fund...purchased [Uniview Technologies,] the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system...Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet...Such surveillance systems are often used to combat crime and the manufacturer has no control over whether they are used for other purposes. But human rights advocates say in China they are also used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents...Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, [said]...“These companies are busy making a profit and don’t want to face realities, but what they’re doing is wrong..." ...Bain defended its purchase of Uniview, stressing that the Chinese company’s products were advertised as instruments for crime control, not political repression. [also refers to Honeywell, General Electric, IBM, United Technologies, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, H3C (part of HP, previously joint venture of 3Com & Huawei), National Foreign Trade Council (USA)]