Security cameras guarding Magna Carta are provided by a Chinese CCTV company whose technology has allegedly aided the persecution of Uyghurs and been exploited by Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, it has emerged.
In letters seen by the Guardian, campaigners called on Salisbury Cathedral, which houses one of four surviving copies of the “powerful symbol of social justice”, to rip out cameras made by Dahua Technology, based in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
They have also written to the authorities responsible for the Parthenon temple in Greece, which is monitored by cameras produced by another Chinese company, Hikvision.
Cameras made by the firms have already been removed from sensitive UK government sites, over concerns that they could be remotely accessed by China and used to spy on sensitive sites.
The problem is not when and what it is recording based on how it is configured. The problem is that law enforcement can (by design) use a backdoor and gain access to these cameras for real-time surveillance, at will. Since they have access to the feed, they can also record it all.
Additionally, these cameras get hacked all the times.
The point being - if the cameras are up, they will be abused by others. If you really need cameras, put them inside your house. That way you’ll only invade your own privacy, and you won’t enable criminals to misuse it for spying on anybody else than yourself.