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| Huawei developed a face recognition system to monitor Uyghurs |
According to the latest report on the Chinese AI monitoring system published by the research organization IPVM, Huawei has developed a facial recognition system to monitor and track Uyghurs in China.
The Washington Post published the news first, indicating that the report was based on documents that were publicly published on the Huawei website and accessed via Google search.
The facial recognition project appears to be a demonstration of how Huawei devices are using the algorithm from Chinese start-up Megvii.
In 2018, Huawei and Megvii jointly tested an AI camera system that can scan faces in a crowd and estimate the age, gender and ethnicity of each person.
The IPVM report focused particularly on the automatic warning function of Uyghurs.
This function uses face recognition technology. When the camera system detects members of a persecuted minority, it detects the person's ethnicity and sends an alert to government agencies.
Uyghurs from the Muslim minority in northwestern China have been subjected to severe repression by the Chinese government, making their identification and persecution particularly dangerous.
As of 2017, at least one million Uyghurs have been transferred to a network of detention centers in Xinjiang where they were forced to accept indoctrination programs.
China has long denied the camps exist, despite satellite images confirming the camps' existence.
The New York Times noted in a 2019 report that several Chinese facial recognition companies are developing algorithms to identify Uyghurs, and some will face US sanctions within months of the report's release.
Megvii has already made connections to the Uyghur ID system, but this is the first sign that Huawei is actively developing and promoting this product.
A left-wing defender of human rights said: In recent years, the role of this technology in the Chinese police force has increased.
This document focuses on how Huawei contributes to technological development by providing servers, cameras, cloud computing infrastructure, and other tools that support the technical functions of the system.
Over the past two years, Huawei and Megvii have announced three monitoring systems that use technology from the two companies, and the two companies acknowledge that these documents are authentic.
Huawei spokesman Glenn Schloss (Glenn Schloss) said: The report is only a test and has not yet seen any actual uses. Huawei provides only generic products for such tests and does not offer any specific applications or algorithms.
A Megvii spokesperson said the company's system is not designed to target or rank races.