Amazon.com Inc. faces questions from senators over an alleged contract with Dahua, a Chinese security camera company that has indicated it has the ability to alert the police when its facial recognition software identifies members of the Uighur ethnic group.
Senators Robert Menendez (DN.J.) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos the day after the Los Angeles Times reported Dahua product support documents that suggest that the company’s technology can classify race passers-by, issue “real-time warnings to non-local Uighurs” and track “Uighurs with hidden terrorist inclinations”.
Dahua is among the Chinese companies included on the Commerce Department’s list of entities for its ties to “human rights violations and abuses in implementing China’s repression campaign” against Uighurs, a Turkish ethnic group. The United States does not restrict American companies like Amazon from buying from companies on the list of entities, although it does require caution. Companies on the list of entities are prohibited from buying American products.
Menendez and Rubio asked whether Amazon knew Dahua was on the list of entities when it was considering entering into a contract with the company and whether it came up in its deliberations. According to a Reuters report, Dahua sold 1,500 thermal imaging cameras to Amazon in a deal estimated at about $ 10 million.
“If these allegations against Dahua are true, it would mean that Amazon deliberately ignored the guidance of the United States government and bought equipment from a listed company that is complicit in China’s atrocities against” the Uighurs, it reads in the joint letter addressed to Bezos. “While buying equipment from Dahua Technology is not illegal, it does raise a number of issues for you as CEO of Amazon.”
On Wednesday, Dahua said in a statement that the documents mentioned by The Times and in a separate report from the IPVM video surveillance news channel were “historic internal software design documents”
“Dahua will not provide the features or applications of the software products in the future,” said the statement. “Dahua will conduct a rigorous internal review and strengthen the design and management review process for the company’s Research and Development functions.”
Dahua said it “does not provide products and services for ethnicity detection” in “regional markets reported by the media”.
The Times report mentioned an Australian company that will cut ties with Dahua after noting a race identification feature in its software, and an American contract holder who is unaware of the company’s name on the list of entities.
Dahua did not address whether these features are functional in other markets.
The company also said that total sales in “relevant regional markets … have been declining rapidly on an annual basis.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“These reports are extremely worrying and show that the comprehensive surveillance system that the Chinese authorities have put in place against the [Uighurs] it’s as bad as we feared, if not worse, ”wrote the senators in the letter.