"Police in China can track protests by enabling ‘alarms’ on Hikvision software", 29 December 2022

Chinese police can set up “alarms” for various protest activities using a software platform provided by Hikvision, a major Chinese camera and surveillance manufacturer... Descriptions of protest activity listed among the “alarms” include “gathering crowds to disrupt order in public places”, “unlawful assembly, procession, demonstration” and threats to “petition”.

These activities are listed alongside offenses such as “gambling” or disruptive events such as “fire hazard” in technical documents available on Hikvision’s website and flagged to the Guardian by surveillance research firm IPVM, or Internet Protocol Video Market. The company’s website also included alarms for “religion” and “Falun Gong” – a spiritual movement banned in China and categorized as a cult by the government – until IPVM contacted the company.

The findings come a month after mass protests against the country’s zero-Covid policies erupted across China. Though the demonstrations resulted in the government easing restrictions, many protesters later received calls from police.

While Hikvision is best known for its camera equipment, the company has joined other players in developing and providing centralized platforms for police and other law enforcement to maintain, manage, analyze and respond to information collected through the many cameras set up across China. Hikvision pitches its cloud platform, called Infovision IoT, as a means to “provide intelligent public security decision-making and services” for police in order to alleviate “uneven allocation of resources, heavy workload, inability to share data”, according to the company’s website.

At least nine alarm types are protest-related, according to a translation of the Hikvision technical guide...

Police who are on duty, for example, will be able to report events or incidents as a “503” event ... which could then trigger an alarm in the system for the rest of the police department, according to Charles Rollet, an IPVM researcher.

“It raises significant freedom of assembly and freedom of religion concerns,” Rollet said. “Technically those two rights are in the People’s Republic of China constitution, but in reality, the government cracks down very hard on those liberties. So I am concerned about how technology can facilitate the tracking of repressed groups.”

The technical document also illustrates the sheer breadth of data on individuals the company enables its customers to track. Various personal attributes are listed as part of a “personnel dictionary” including political status, religion, and ethnicity as well as physical descriptions such as whether someone has long or short hair or wears glasses, the color of their coats, their age range and whether they smile.

Hikvision declined to comment ...