Hikvision: Chinese surveillance tech giant denies leaked Pentagon spy claim
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Loading... - Haugen Phillip
- 18 Apr 2023
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Chinese surveillance technology giant Hikvision has denied it is illegally disguising its products sold to the US government to enable Chinese espionage.
It was responding to BBC queries about allegations revealed in a recently leaked Pentagon document.
But Hikvision did not answer questions on whether it partners with Chinese intelligence agencies.
The company is the world's largest surveillance camera maker and has close links to the Chinese state.
It supplies its products to resellers who in turn supply governments and companies, often with the resellers' branding, in a process known as "white labelling".
Though this is a common business model, Hikvision has come under intense scrutiny for its ties to the Chinese state and the use of its products in monitoring Uyghurs.
The US had previously banned Hikvision products from its government supply chains, but in November regulators took this a step further and put in place a nationwide ban, citing concerns over national security.
In a leaked US government document seen by the BBC, Hikvision is described as "partnering with Chinese intelligence entities" and "using relationships with resellers to disguise its products for sale to government suppliers".
It claims this was "creating vectors for Beijing to compromise DoD [Department of Defense] networks", and that the presence of Hikvision products would probably persist in US government supply chains "because of the company's efforts to mask its exports to retain access to US and allies' markets". Read More…
