#Huawei tested ‘Uighur alarms’ to help track Muslims: report

Chinese tech titan Huawei tested a facial-recognition tool that could spot oppressed Uighur Muslims and alert authorities to their presence, surveillance researchers say.

Huawei worked with Megvii — one of China’s largest artificial intelligence firms — to validate the “Uighur alarms” as Beijing carried out a brutal repression campaign against the ethnic minority group, according to a report from IPVM, a Pennsylvania-based firm specializing in video surveillance research.

IPVM unearthed a January 2018 Huawei report that listed the Uighur alert tool among the “basic functions” of a facial recognition system powered by Megvii’s software and Huawei’s cameras, servers and storage.

The report — which was available on Huawei’s website before the company deleted it — also showed that Megvii’s program could determine a person’s ethnicity as part of its “face attribute analysis,” IPVM said.

“Huawei and Megvii’s collaboration on Uighur alarms further proves that many large Chinese video surveillance/face recognition companies are deeply implicated in Uighur repression,” IPVM said in its Tuesday report. “Anyone doing business with these firms should take note.”

The report indicates two of China’s most powerful companies have played a role in Beijing’s brutal crackdown on Uighurs, who have been forced into labor camps in the country’s Xinjiang region. The US has banned imports of certain products from the region over concerns that they’re made with forced labor.

Chinese authorities rely on a vast network of surveillace technology to track and control Uighurs, including facial-recognition systems that look for Uighurs based on their appearance, The New York Times reported last year.

Huawei and Megvii have rolled out three different surveillance systems that use both companies’ technology in recent years, but it’s unclear if any of them use the Uighur alarm feature, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on IPVM’s findings.

Neither Huawei nor Megvii have disputed the authenticity of the document that IPVM discovered. Huawei told the firm that the Uighur alarm feature was only tested and “has not seen real-world application.”

“Huawei only supplies general-purpose products for this kind of testing,” the Shenzhen-based company told IPVM. “We do not provide custom algorithms or applications.”

Megvii did not directly address the 2018 document but said that its products are not meant to label or target particular ethnic groups, according to the report.

“Our business is focused on the well-being and safety of individuals, not about monitoring any particular demographic groups,” Megvii told IPVM.

China’s foreign affairs ministry did not immediately respond to an email from The Post on Wednesday. Beijing has previously dismissed claims that it is repressing Uighurs, saying the internment camps where they’re being held are vocational centers meant to combat terrorism.

“Practice has shown that the party’s strategy for governing Xinjiang in the new era is completely correct,” Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly said in September.