China: Hikvision allegedly deploys "ethnic minority" detecting video surveillance technology
"Hikvision Violates Pledge, Ethnic Minority Analytics In Latest Platform", 24 October 2023
Hikvision's latest software includes ethnic minority detection technology, despite claiming for years that it had stopped supporting this oppressive technology...
...A live Hikvision API guide explicitly listed the video analytic "are they an ethnic minority" (是否少数民族) until IPVM reached out for comment when Hikvision promptly deleted the evidence. This directly contradicts Hikvision's repeated claims to have phased out minority recognition in 2018. Ethnic minority alerts in the PRC are typically used to target Uyghurs, the subject of serious human rights violations, according to the UN...
...Ethnic minority analytics are widely-deployed in PRC video surveillance to automatically alert end users, chiefly police, whenever minority-looking faces appear in security camera footage...
...iSecure Center, or the Integrated Security Management Platform (综合安防管理平台) in Chinese, is a Hikvision 'Open' platform allowing Hikvision's enterprise partners to quickly deploy various analytics such as parking lot management (停车场), fever screening (测温应用), and face analytics (人脸应用)....Hikvision's API guide for iSecure Center includes the analytic "are they an ethnic minority" (是否少数民族), using "isEthnic" (in English) as the string of code for requesting this feature...
...This is the clearest recent case of Hikvision providing racial profiling software to its customers in the PRC. This confirms Hikvision targeting minorities, as its own hired attorney Pierre-Richard Prosper, admitted in a speech this year. Additionally, Hikvision deleting the API guide without providing any comment shows the firm is intent on hiding evidence about this technology rather than taking responsibility...
...IPVM reached out to Hikvision for this article on October 20, however, they did not respond...