The UK’s biometrics commissioner has written to Dahua Technology to ask the company about the extent of its involvement in surveillance activity within Uyghur ‘political re-education camps” in China.

Last July, the Chinese business was named by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee as a company playing a direct role in “facilitating systematic human rights atrocities” in the Xinjiang region of China by supplying biometric surveillance technology.

The letter followed a request by Dahua Technology to discuss Secure by Default – a scheme covered by the UK Surveillance Camera Code.

“In December last year the Uyghur Tribunal heard evidence from a number of sources and found that the Chinese State had committed genocide against Uyghur Muslims in the Northwest Region of China known as Xinjiang, starkly increasing public awareness of both the human rights and ethical issues and of the role played by companies designing and supplying that technology,” wrote Professor Fraser Sampson, biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner. “The availability of what some see as newly-intrusive technology such as Live Facial Recognition, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning/Automated Decision-Making has generated numerous requests for my office to provide specific guidance in respect of the ethical and human rights considerations when procuring and deploying such surveillance capabilities and many relevant authorities are reviewing their surveillance partnerships and the extent of their human rights and ethical obligations.”

Sampson added that in order to have a meaningful meeting around the Secure by Default initiative, the company would need to outline how it is addressing the Committee’s concerns and the steps it is taking to “promote human rights and ethics”.

He asked that the business confirm its recognition of the government’s findings – that there is “compelling evidence of widespread and systematic human rights violations occurring in Xinjiang, including the extra-judicial detention of over a million Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in “political re-education camps” since 2017; systematic restrictions on Uyghur culture and the practice of Islam; extensive and invasive surveillance targeting minorities and credible evidence of forced labour both within and beyond Xinjiang, and of the forced suppression of births” – as well as outline the extent of the company’s “involvement in those camps and the surveillance activity that supports their operation".

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