Western companies including Cisco Systems are poised to help build an ambitious new surveillance project in China—a citywide network of as many as 500,000 cameras that...human-rights advocates warn could target political dissent. The system, being built in the city of Chongqing over the next two to three years, is among the largest and most sophisticated video-surveillance projects of its kind in China, and perhaps the world...The project sheds light on how Western tech companies sell their wares in China...and other places where there is potential for the gear to be used for political purposes...China in particular has drawn criticism for treating political dissent as a crime and has a track record of using technology to suppress it... Officials at Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif., declined to discuss its possible involvement in detail...The company has previously said—including in a June blog post by Cisco's general counsel, Mark Chandler—that the company strictly abides by the Tiananmen export controls and doesn't supply any gear to China that is "customized in any way" to facilitate repressive uses...[also refers to Intergraph, Hewlett-Packard, Hikvision]