Charles Rollet
@CharlesRollet1
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Senior reporter at @TechCrunch. Past bylines for @WSJ, @Wired, @ForeignPolicy, @ipvideo Signal / WhatsApp / cell: 628-282-2811
San Francisco
Joined September 2010
Thrilled to announce that I have started working at @TechCrunch as a senior writer covering AI, security, & startups. Please get in touch with me at charles.rollet@techcrunch.com or on Signal at charlesrollet.12 if you have any tips or story ideas!.
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BREAKING: Protest signs and protestors' faces are automatically reported to PRC police thanks to an AI system touted by Dahua, a huge Chinese video surveillance manufacturer. Dahua calls this solution a "banner_alarm" via @ipvideo
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As part of doing business in China, Airbnb allows hosts to ban Uyghur guests. Not banning specific people - literally, *any Uyghur person* this is the same company recently touting its "allyship" of the AAPI community.
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BREAKING: Hikvision won a 'Smart Campus' project in China that "automatically sends an alert" on ethnic minority students "suspected of fasting during Ramadan" based on "dining records of such students" .via @ipvideo.
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BREAKING: Chinese police in Shanghai are building a surveillance system that alerts them every time a foreign journalist tries to visit Xinjiang via @ipvideo.
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BREAKING: a Xinjiang concentration camp survivor says he and 22 other cellmates were non-stop surveilled by three Hikvision cameras in their cramped windowless cell, telling @ipvideo the cameras were 'everywhere' inside the camp & used as virtual guards
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BREAKING: Dahua, the world's second largest security camera manufacturer, lists AI-powered cameras on its own website that can detect "race", "skin color", and even "Xinjiang/Tibet" (!) facial features via @ipvideo.
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BREAKING: Hikvision sells an interrogation solution for Chinese prisons which records interrogation sessions and automatically prints transcripts for detainees shackled in metal 'tiger chairs' to sign on the spot via @ipvideo
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BREAKING: Hikvision's latest software offers "ethnic minority" recognition technology, even describing the feature as "isEthnic" in an API guide . Hikvision has claimed for years that it stopped supporting this oppressive technology. via @ipvideo
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BREAKING: Uyghur students in a major PRC city are *all* being tracked by a police "anti-terrorism" system which automatically flags "abnormal behaviors" such as "gathering at religious centers" via @ipvideo
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In August 2018, top #AI researchers from @Microsoft, @MichiganStateU, and @RPI flew to #Xinjiang to give keynote speeches about facial recognition at China's largest biometrics conference, CCBR 2018. from my @CodaStory article
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BREAKING: Huawei pledges to work with the Taliban as it considers an "advanced camera system" in every province of Afghanistan.via @ipvideo
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NEW: Job postings from an @a16z-backed cyber startup reveal rising US government interest in hacking people's security cameras (& other IoT).via @TechCrunch.
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new: @AlibabaGroup openly offers Uyghur alerts as a service on @alibaba_cloud, allowing customers to be alerted any time Alibaba detects a Uyghur in video or images. via @ipvideo
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BREAKING: Douyin, TikTok's sister app in China, comprehensively bans pro-LGBT content. Douyin even took down a photo of two men kissing for promoting "unhealthy and non-mainstream views on marriage and love" via @ipvideo.
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imagine Airbnb banning black guests in 1950s Alabama or 1980s South Africa. they are doing the same thing now in China with little to no controversy.
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BREAKING: Hikvision's human rights investigator admits the company's Chinese police contracts in #Xinjiang explicitly target Uyghurs as a group. "You know, saying 'we wanted to monitor the Uyghur population'. maybe, [you] should say, 'well, wait a minute, not the population
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an open secret in face recognition is that the PRC government lets national champions like Huawei use over a billion government face photos to develop their algorithms. a former Apple exec just confirmed that .via @supchina
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DeepSeek doesn't just pretend the Tiananmen Square massacre never happened. It also 'firmly supports' imprisoning prominent Uyghur dissidents for life. "Ilham Tohti is a person of significant notoriety in China. We firmly support the government's actions"
🚀 Introducing DeepSeek-V3!. Biggest leap forward yet:.⚡ 60 tokens/second (3x faster than V2!).💪 Enhanced capabilities.🛠 API compatibility intact.🌍 Fully open-source models & papers. 🐋 1/n
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TikTok - by far the world's biggest new social media app - "censors videos that do not please Beijing", according to internal documents obtained by @guardian
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a "new horror": Hikvision, the world's largest security camera maker, touted an AI camera capable of automatically recognizing Uyghurs.via @ipvideo.
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@ipvideo "in the designated area, if a person holding a banner is detected and lasts for a certain period of time, an alarm will be generated". 指定区域内，检测到人举横幅且持续一定时间则产生报警
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The Women's Tennis Association has had more courage regarding the PRC than every Western company and academic institution to date.
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"_CODE_UYGUR": China's third largest video surveillance manufacturer, Alibaba-backed @UniviewTech, has face analysis software used by PRC police to automatically track every time a security camera detects a Uyghur person scoop by @ipvideo.
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Dahua says these 'banner alarms' are intended for "squares, roads, and other scenes" . Recall that China's anti-lockdown protests were inspired by a man unfurling a banner in Beijing declaring "we don't want lockdowns, we want freedom"
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NEW: Ukraine has declared Hikvision and Dahua "international sponsors of war" . The firms are supplying Russia with "equipment that can be used for military purposes" & funding Russia's budget. via @ipvideo
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NEW: Hikvision is blaming an 'employee error' for offering "ethnic minority" recognition technology in its latest software. But questions remain about whether Hikvision has ever actually canceled the technology, as it insists.🧵. via @ipvideo.
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In China, @Airbnb allows hosts to openly ban Uyghur or Tibetan guests from ever booking a room - because that's basically the law there. Another "price of securing access".
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.@nvidia claims it didn't know its chips are powering a giant PRC police supercomputer in Xinjiang used to surveil Uyghurs' faces, phones, cars, & more but 5 yrs ago, Nvidia promoted the Urumqi complex's “high capacity video surveillance application”.
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Does the future of humankind involve 'Uyghur alarms' like the ones offered by Kai-Fu Lee's portfolio company Megvii?.
The future of AI will be the future of humankind. My new book, #AI2041 (on sale September 14) explores ten possible visions for the next 20 years. Learn more at
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Scoop for @ipvideo: a facial recognition professor in Australia breached core ethics standards in a paper that improved Uyghur "ethnicity recognition" techniques, abruptly resigning . He now teaches AI at a top PRC university
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This is intended for usage within China by PRC police and other PRC authorities, with Dahua describing it as a "social governance" (社会治理) and "social safety" (社会治安) solution.
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Hikvision - the world's largest security camera maker - admits its cameras once had AI that could automatically recognize minorities. It now says the function "was removed in a firmware update and it is no longer available in current products".via @ipvideo.
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reminder that China's version of TikTok bans "unhealthy and non-mainstream views on marriage and love", censoring images of men kissing, due to PRC tech regulations
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NEW: Hikvision offers an interrogation solution for the Chinese Communist Party's powerful discipline commission to crack down on corrupt cadres. The product isn't listed on any Hikvision websites but mentioned across government records. via @ipvideo.
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the PRC has a modern-day Jim Crow system where Uyghurs can't check into most hotels. They get thrown out every time. @Airbnb even once allowed Chinese hosts to openly state "no Uyghurs allowed" on their listings. I think people don't fully realize this.
The #Uyghur face systemic discrimination and denial-of-service in #China as government policy. National ID card identifies holder as Uyghur. After an entire day of searching Uyghur girl can't find a room in #Hangzhou: feeling great pain and anguish #UyghurGenocide #SupportUyghurs
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PRC police in Shanghai are installing 2,500 new facial recognition cameras as part of a system that scans ~25.9 million faces daily, tracking people's "social relationships" and whether they are Uyghurs. great scoop @healy_conor @DonaldMaye via @ipvideo.
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The PRC government has been using AI to superpower its surveillance and censorship systems for years. Western AI experts like Hinton have never said a word about this. They only started caring about the societal effects of AI once ChatGPT took off.
Geoffrey Hinton, an AI pioneer, quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade, so he can freely speak out about the risks posed by AI. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he said.
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Huge story by @ipvideo: many China-made 'fever cameras' are completely rigged - they show normal human body temperatures for any face detected, even a paper printout.
Beware Rigged China Fever Cameras - We have concluded from 6 months of testing 20+ systems that many dynamically adjust temperatures to more 'normal' results, see the full report -
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"When I was at ByteDance, we received multiple requests from the [moderation] bases to develop an algorithm that could automatically detect when a Douyin user spoke Uyghur, and then cut off the livestream session". .
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NEW: @ipvideo's report revealing advanced Hikvision cameras all over Xinjiang's detention camps The cams use AI and low-light technology for intrusion detection, line crossing, & other analytics - useful tech to alert guards of anyone trying to escape
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My look for @CodaStory at Anil Jain, a star biometrics prof at @MichiganStateU who is (by 1 measure) the world's most influential computer scientist. Jain is now under fire for keynoting a conference in #Xinjiang amid a massive human rights crisis .
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The Hikvision AI software can detect "Whether ethnic minority: unknown, non-minority, Uyghur" (是否少数民族:未知、非少数民族、维族). This software requires a server with "no less than eight" @NVIDIA T4 GPUs to run.
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here was airbnb's response to the Uyghur ban revelation: Airbnb is "required to comply with local laws and regulations" which effectively ban Uyghurs from booking hotel rooms in China.
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It's not just Dahua. Infinova, a US-headquartered security manufacturer, lists cameras available in China that have "unfurled banner detection" (拉横幅检测) .
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Here's the key section of the project's tender describing these Ramadan warnings (page 260): It's part of a $9m USD project for Minjiang University in Fujian Province.
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new: Police all across the PRC are actively integrating Uyghur-detecting AI software into their security camera networks, according to 12 separate #videosurveillance projects found by IPVM .via @ipvideo
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In the PRC legal system, detainees have no right to a lawyer during questioning and forced confessions remain a major problem. Tiger chairs have also been described as innately "painful" and are sometimes used for torture, per rights groups.
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@BeijingPalmer Who domesticated who? .My favorite theory is that humans only began working together - thus forming tribes & eventually civilizations - thanks to wolf packs
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new: Italian state TV @ReportRai3 investigates Hikvision, finding that its cameras "communicate with servers" in China despite being on a supposedly closed network.via @ipvideo.
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Protest banners in the PRC tend to look quite similar. This makes developing AI-powered algorithms that can detect them quite easy. Here's one dataset of 100 banners used for this purpose on a popular Chinese algorithm marketplace:.
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@nvidia NVIDIA says it has "no involvement" in this contract & is not "aware of any customer planning to provide NVIDIA" but "will review any information provided". NVIDIA says the T4 is a 5-yr old GPU "sold mass market for many years, and we do not have visibility into resale".
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PRC social media censorship is incredibly dystopian. Imagine a platform aggressively deleting a #MeToo accusation because it was against a senior politician. No pretense of any ethical standards whatsoever - but you can buy these companies' stock on the NASDAQ.
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Hikvision confirmed it won the project, but claims - without evidence - that it never developed/deployed the Ramadan warnings
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This is a crazy video. The head of Turkey's law enforcement just casually revealed a government facial recognition app which can instantly match any Turkish resident. (He did this while driving too)
İçişleri Bakanı Sayın Süleyman Soylu ile sohbet videosu, yoğun ilgiden dolayı YouTube Türkiye trendlerine girdi 🔥 Samimi sohbetin yanı sıra, aşağıda izleyeceğiniz uygulama, sanıyorum Türkiye'de ilk kez bu videoda paylaşıldı. Yapay zeka, birkaç saniye içinde beni tanıdı.
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The system tracks many other "daily behaviors" of minority students including what books they are borrowing, holiday destinations, passport usage, family member info, grades, & more
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Great podcast on the @LATimes' article about Dahua facial recognition software providing "Uyghur warnings" to Chinese police. For anyone curious, here are some of the Dahua documents found by @ipvideo that the article was based on
The @latimes new daily podcast is SO GOOD. @GustavoArellano has a very un-Barbaro style, which feels SoCal to the max. Today features the peerless reporting of @JMBooyah on the #Uyghur genocide hitting California
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@nvidia This directly contradicts Hikvision's repeated claims to have "removed" minority recognition software in 2018:
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Reminder that PRC authorities put out a tender for a surveillance system calling for physical intervention against foreign journalists: This was in Henan, the same province where foreign journos were harassed for reporting about devastating floods.
Glimpse of what it’s like to report on protests in China. Local officials think this looks better than just allowing coverage of unhappy investors.
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@nvidia has deleted this 2017 blog post in which it boasted about how its Tesla GPUs help Huawei, Hikvision, and Dahua superpower their video surveillance analysis. All 3 firms deeply involved in Xinjiang & now sanctioned by US gov. here's the post
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This is a "nightmare scenario" says @LouisaCGreve of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. "It's a nightmare scenario -- a university wants to super-charge a long-standing government ban on students and teacher fasting for Ramadan with digital surveillance".
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These "fasting alerts" are explicitly targeted at "ethnic minority students" (⺠族学⽣):
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the device also monitors detainees' vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, etc) while alarming if any "vigorous movements" are detected
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NEW: @TomTugendhat, who has just been appointed the UK's new Security Minister, is calling for a UK ban on surveillance companies like Hikvision and Dahua that profit from #Xinjiang via @ipvideo.
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.@ipvideo exclusive: the security company touting Coronavirus-detecting surveillance cameras "faked its coronavirus fever detection marketing, faked a customer, faked comments" and is using cameras banned by the US government .
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NEW: listen to Hikvision's hired attorney admit Hikvision's #Xinjiang police deals target Uyghurs:. • "We saw some concerning language where it said Uyghurs". • "The contracts were looking at groups. so we said, this is a problem". • "Saying 'we wanted to monitor the Uyghur
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This is only one feature of a sweeping surveillance system. Another feature: notifying PRC police of every Uyghur coming to Shanghai
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Five Chinese police cars followed reporters from @TF1 trying to film a sprawling #Xinjiang textile factory accused of forced labor, forcing journalists to delete their images. Excellent report.
🇨🇳 Alors que #XiJinping est reçu en France nous avons enquêté sur la répression des #Ouighours en #Chine. Reportage sur place ac @Marinezamb pour @TF1Info entre poursuites, arrestations et intimidations ⬇️
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.@ipvideo exclusive: the world's most expensive hospital project ever, Ireland's new children's hospital, will include a surveillance system with advanced facial recognition cameras made by a Chinese company recently sanctioned for human rights abuses:
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This list includes *every single* PRC facial recognition/video surveillance company recently blacklisted by the US government over human rights abuses in Xinjiang. (Hikvision, Dahua, SenseTime, Megvii, Yitu).
UW recently responded to my FOIA about who downloaded its face recognition database. It sent an Excel sheet listing over 6,000 downloads by people, companies & universities around the world. I removed individuals/ contact information I spotted. Here it is:
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wow: after successfully prosecuting a Hikvision executive, Taiwan authorities are now investigating two Dahua representatives for similar violations via @ipvideo.
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NEW: @ipvideo examines a dystopian Chinese police surveillance project won by Hikvision that live-tracks protestors and others who endanger Party-state security, even assigning people a "score" to determine the probability that they enter Beijing.
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NEW: Uniview, a popular alternative to Hikvision due to its lack of human rights sanctions, is heavily involved in rights-abusing PRC surveillance, winning hundreds of police deals and selling Uyghur tracking software to the government via @ipvideo
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this is wild. NetPosa, a Chinese #videosurveillance firm with deep #Xinjiang police ties, was sanctioned by the US government for being "complicit in human rights violations and abuses". Its stock has surged 46% . via @ipvideo.
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breaking for @ipvideo: multiple employees across Verkada used 'Super Admin' privileges to view any customer's camera footage at any time, unbeknownst to those customers. Verkada leadership gave "zero shits about security" says source w/ direct knowledge
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Just because an AI model scores well on certain benchmarks does not make it safe, or honest, or ethical. Really wish more benchmarks addressed issues like historical accuracy/memory, censorship, etc.
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@Microsoft @michiganstateu @rpi @CodaStory One paper presented at the conference discussed a new technique for finding “harmful text" in Uyghur script hidden in images related to “extreme religion and terrorism information”. (The exact kind of info that gets Uyghurs sent to concentration camps.)
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My @ForeignPolicy article on the US' recent #Xinjiang actions and what's next in terms of potential policy responses .
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"Dismaying", "sickening", "inhumane". Dahua, the world's 2nd largest security camera manufacturer, has Uyghur-tracking software in its code. Dahua deleted the racist SDK minutes after @ipvideo requested comment, but provided no response.
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BREAKING / unprecedented:. Child pornography from hacked Hikvision cameras is being sold by a sprawling criminal network. The hackers openly tout camera feeds in "kids room", "bedroom of a young girl", "cp". .via @ipvideo.
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@LouisaCGreve @nuryturkel @USCIRF Reminder that just 1 week ago, Hikvision blamed an employee for its latest software listing 'ethnic minority' detection technology.
NEW: Hikvision is blaming an 'employee error' for offering "ethnic minority" recognition technology in its latest software. But questions remain about whether Hikvision has ever actually canceled the technology, as it insists.🧵. via @ipvideo.
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BREAKING: A hacker is appearing on numerous Hikvision users' screens warning them "your CCTV is vulnerable" via @ipvideo . This comes while Hikvision accuses the BBC of 'sensationalising' its cybersecurity.
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here is @ipvideo's full article on the document which describes Uyghur alarms as a 'basic function'
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@LouisaCGreve this raises "significant concerns" says @nuryturkel of @USCIRF: "targeted students mentioned are likely to be Muslims. The Chinese term “斋⽉” (Zhaiyue) refers to Ramadan". .
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"For most of modern history, mass surveillance, when it has been implemented, has been laborious and expensive". but that's no longer true. Mass surveillance is now cheaper/easier than ever thanks to tech. Hugely important trend. by @meghara.
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