July 22, 2024
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of cameras manufactured by companies linked to grave human rights abuses by the Chinese government are monitoring public spaces all over Australia, and potentially providing backdoor access to footage to other bad actors.
The cameras, manufactured by Chinese Communist Partylinked companies Hikvision and Dahua, were removed last year from government departments amid spyware concerns, but they remain prolific in countless other public settings.
Leading global security expert Conor Healy, who visited Australia last week, said concerns regarding the capacity for the cameras to enable covert access to an array of bad actors, including pedophiles and organised criminal networks, were at least as worrying as the companies' links to Chinese human rights abuses.
"Claims of thousands or tens of thousands of Dahua and Hikvision surveillance devices in Australia are serious underestimations," said Mr Healy, director of government research at US-based independent security and surveillance industry research group IPVM.
"The true number is at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions, given their significant market share in Australia.
"Australians can easily see this for themselves by walking a block of any city street, and that is without considering the numerous other brands these devices masquerade as."
During a walk around Melbourne last week, Mr Healy spotted Hikvision and Dahua cameras in locations including the Shrine of Remembrance, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Town Hall, and Melbourne Airport.
He said while espionage concerns were valid, they "tend to politicise this issue and drown out the broader public impacts of insecure security products".
"Whether created by the managed security services or carelessness, cyber vulnerabilities exist for anyone to exploit once discovered," Mr Healy said.
"Cameras in people's homes used to monitor children have fed illicit markets on Telegram for child pornography. Abuse for myriad forms of criminal activity can happen, and is happening.
"Government officials ... inexplicably appear to be ignorant of this grave problem, perhaps taking cues from security industry professionals who regularly push the specious and perverse logic that it's really the public who are to blame for not updating their software, or not connecting devices in the most secure way, rather than the manufacturers.
"If we cannot agree on China, we should at least agree that it is unacceptable for security manufacturers to sell insecure products, then do little to address their failures. Western governments are enablers, and should be cracking down on cybersecurity failures with the same zeal as on oil spills or E. coli outbreaks."
An audit of federal government departments last year resulted in the detection and removal of at least 1550 Hikvision and Dahua cameras from at least 245 sites, with 435 cameras found at Defence sites alone.
Opposition home affairs and cyber security spokesman James Paterson said "high-risk vendors" such as Hikvision and Dahua had "no place in federal, state or local government because of the cyber security risk they pose and the immorality of supporting companies involved in serious human rights abuses".
