The UK government received a wake-up call last week that the Chinese government was monitoring the country’s population through its artificial intelligence satellites and thousands of CCTV cameras.
Fraser Sampson, Commissioner for Biometrics and CCTV Cameras, wrote a detailed report to Michel Grave, a member of the Council of Ministers, reporting on the dominance of Chinese companies in the supply and deployment of CCTV equipment in the UK. Sampson is extremely concerned about the dominance of two companies, Dahua and Hikvision, which have captured about 60% of the CCTV market share in the UK. Since both companies are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Frazier believes that both companies can use the cameras at any time for the Chinese government.
Most of the cameras produced by these companies are installed in schools, NHS trusts, army headquarters and universities. And a third of them have backdoors that can be used to access images and data from cameras without the permission of the owner.
There are around 164,000 Hikvision cameras installed in public areas in the UK, while Dahua has more than 14,000 cameras installed at various government offices, according to estimates by the UK group Big Brother Watch.
According to experts, China may use CCTV cameras to carry out targeted missile strikes. This is possible by matching the location of CCTV cameras with satellites and then using artificial intelligence technology to launch missile strikes based on the indications of the satellites and the coordinates of the CCTV cameras.