ARGUMENT: China & the surveillance stateMatt Hancock and the Problem with China’s Surveillance Tech
Matt Hancock, Britain’s Health Secretary, resigned last week – and informed his wife that he was divorcing her – after CCTV footage emerged of him snogging his assistant outside his office. Ian Williams writes that the Hancock affair raises serious questions involving surveillance and national security: The cameras involved were made by the Chinese company Hikvision, one of the 1.3 million Hikvision cameras installed across the U.K. Hikvision has close links to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s intelligence services. Even if the Chinese intelligence services were not involved in leaking the compromising Hancock video to the press, the episode is one more indication, if one were needed, of the security risks involved in allowing an unregulated access by Chinese technology companies access unfettered and unregulated access to Western markets.
Matt Hancock, Britain’s Health Secretary, resigned last week – and informed his wife that he was divorcing her – after CCTV footage emerged of him snogging his assistant outside his office, a woman with whom, it now appears, he had a relationship for a while. People were less upset with his extramarital affair than with his hypocrisy: as a Secretary of Health he had imposed strict social distancing rules which prevented children from saying proper goodbye to a dying parent, and drove many people and businesses into bankruptcy.
Ian Williams writes in The Spectator that there is another troubling aspect to the Hancock affair: Surveillance.
“How can it have been so easy for somebody to obtain [the footage of Hancock and his assistant]?” he asks.
There are other questions, since it appears that nobody knows for sure how it was done. “Did [the video] come from somebody with access to the feed who downloaded it or filmed it on the screen with a mobile phone? Or was the camera hacked, because the dirty little secret of these devices is that they are not at all secure?” Also: Who installed [the camera]? Were there others in the office and were they recording sound? How many other ministerial offices are being monitored in this way?”
Williams stresses that these are fundamental national security questions. “CCTV cameras have proliferated in Britain, and government organizations – local and central – have been among the most enthusiastic buyers.
The Hancock incident is glaring testament to how out of control this surveillance fetish has become – and how systems supposedly designed to improve security can seriously undermine it.”
But there is more:
Then there is the thorny question: what make was the camera? There have been reports that the cameras in the Department for Health were made by the Chinese company Hikvision. Its cameras are in widespread use across Britain, and public authorities are particularly avid buyers. An estimated 1.3 million Hikvision cameras are being used by airports, councils, NHS trusts and government departments. More than half of London councils own Chinese surveillance cameras. Did Hikvision equipment capture the Health Secretary’s embrace? It is more than an academic question, since UK intelligence agencies are reportedly pushing for curbs on ‘smart cities’ technology supplied by China which they fear could be used by Beijing for espionage, surveillance or the collection of sensitive data.
