China's "Skin Colour Analytics" Cameras Raise Rights Concern

 China's "Skin Colour Analytics" Cameras Raise Rights Concern

According to a report from February 2021, Dahua gave the Chinese police a video surveillance system with "real-time Uyghur warnings" that contained information on eyebrow size, skin tone, and ethnicity.

Washington: According to a study by the IPVM (Internet Protocol Video Market), a US-based safety and security industry research firm, as quoted by Voice of America, Dahua, a Chinese manufacturer of security systems, is selling cameras in Europe with what it calls a "skin colour analytics" capability.  

According to the IPVM report from July 31 that VOA Mandarin was able to receive, "The company defended the analytics to have a 'basic feature of an intelligent security solution.'"

The United States of America's state-owned news network and global radio broadcaster, VoA, creates digital, TV, and radio material that is distributed all over the world.

According to IPVM and the Los Angeles Times, Dahua gave the Chinese police a video surveillance system with "real-time Uyghur warnings" in February 2021. Information about a person's brow size, skin tone, and race were included in these warnings.

Since 2016, the government of China's Xinjiang province has granted contracts totaling $1 billion to Dahua and another Chinese recording system company, Hikvision, according to IPVM's 2018 statistics report. 

According to the study, "skin color/complexion" is one of the "human body characteristics" included in Dahua's ICC Open Platform Handbook. The "skin colour types" that Dahua analytic tools would target include "yellow," "black," and "white," according to the company's "data dictionary." This was confirmed by VOA Mandarin on Dahua's Chinese website, according to VOA.

The IPVM report also includes skin colour detection under the "Personnel Control" heading, a feature that Dahua offers as a feature of their Smart Office Park solution designed to provide security for important corporate campuses in China.

Basically, if you enable these video analytics, the camera will attempt to identify the skin tone of everyone it records in the video clip or anyone it passes by automatically." VOA cited co-author of the IPVM study Charles Rollet. 

In three European nations, Dahua offers cameras with the capacity to analyse skin pigmentation, according to IPVM study. Germany, France, and the Netherlands have all experienced racial strife in the recent past.

According to Dahua, a key feature of surveillance equipment is the ability to evaluate skin tone.

"The platform in question is totally in line with our promises to not build answers that target any single racial, ethnic, other national group," Dahua stated in a statement to IPVM. One fundamental component of a smart security solution is the capability to broadly detect visible traits like height, weight, hair and eye colour, and broad categories of skin colour.

The company has reportedly previously denied offering the aforementioned functionality, and colour identification is not usually seen in widely used surveillance technology systems, according to IPMV.

There has been debate regarding mistakes caused by skin tone in surveillance systems for face recognition for a long time in several Western countries. The identification of skin tone in surveillance applications presents issues with civil and human rights.

It's uncommon to see it for skin colour as a result, Rollet continued, "because it's such a divisive and ethically fraught field."

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) technology manager Anna Bacciarelli, Dahua technology shouldn't include skin tone analyses.

She claims that because technology allows camera owners and operators to racially profile people, "skin tone analytics-based monitoring software poses a massive danger to the right to the prohibition of discrimination."  

The claim that Dahua's surveillance devices are made to make racial identification possible was refuted. Contrary to claims made by some media outlets, Dahua Technology has not and will never develop solutions aimed at any one ethnic group, according to the website of its US-based firm.

The Chinese technology firms Dahua and Hikvision, which have close links to Beijing, were found to be a danger to US national security in 2022 by the US Federal Communications Commission.

The European Union adopted an amendment proposal on June 14 for its draught Artificial Intelligence Law, which is a step towards outlawing the use of face recognition technology altogether in public areas.

Svenja Hahn, a German member of the European Parliament and leader of the Renew Europe Group, told Politico that face recognition technology "has no place in a liberal democracy" since it has been used for widespread surveillance in China.

The US government has long outlawed racial discrimination against consumers in industries like banking and healthcare. Law enforcement alone is allowed to use the face recognition systems offered by IBM, Google, and Microsoft.

In the opinion of Rollet, "If the camera is working on at night or if there are shadows, it can incorrectly categorise people."

Caitlin Chin studies technology regulation both domestically and overseas as a fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Accordingly, she told VOA, "this is something that's both very dehumanising and very concerning from a human rights perspective, in part because any errors in the technology could result in false arrests and discrimination, but also due to the ability to sort people by skin colour on an individual basis almost inevitably results in people being discriminated against."