{"id":226495,"date":"2020-12-17T19:24:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T03:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=226495"},"modified":"2022-09-09T18:21:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T01:21:31","slug":"tech-companies-scientists-profit-from-surveilling-uyghurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2020\/12\/tech-companies-scientists-profit-from-surveilling-uyghurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Companies, Scientists Profit From Surveilling Uyghurs"},"content":{"rendered":"
Since late 2017, widespread media coverage has examined Xinjiang’s role as a “frontline laboratory for surveillance,”<\/a> which has underpinned the ongoing mass detention campaign<\/a> in the region. In many cases, American technology and research has helped fuel<\/a> these developments. Last week, The Washington Post exposed Chinese tech giant Huawei\u2019s \u201cUyghur Alarms,\u201d facial recognition scans that can notify police upon recognizing Uyghurs<\/a>. Now, The New York Times’ Raymond Zhong reports that Alibaba and Kingsoft Cloud, two Nasdaq-listed Chinese tech companies, have also created facial recognition software that automatically flags Uyghurs<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n Alibaba\u2019s website for its cloud computing business showed how clients could use its software to detect the faces of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities within images and videos, according to pages on the site that were discovered by the surveillance industry publication IPVM and shared with The New York Times. The feature was built into Alibaba software that helps web platforms monitor digital content for material related to terrorism, pornography and other red-flag categories, the website said.<\/p>\n [\u2026] \u201cAs government regulation gets stricter by the day, these are tasks that all websites and platforms must urgently handle and manage seriously,\u201d Alibaba\u2019s website explains. The company is China\u2019s leading provider of cloud services and a partner to international companies that have online operations in China.<\/p>\n [\u2026] Another Chinese cloud provider, Kingsoft Cloud, had described on its website technology that could use an image of a face to predict \u201crace,\u201d among other attributes. According to a page and a document on Kingsoft Cloud\u2019s website that were discovered by IPVM and shared with The Times, the company\u2019s software could evaluate whether a person\u2019s race was \u201cUighur\u201d or \u201cnon-Uighur.\u201d [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Alibaba Uyghur Recognition As A Service, watch and learn more: pic.twitter.com\/n0Ic9QhCiU<\/a><\/p>\n — IPVM (@ipvideo) December 16, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n