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.
It’s not like nation state actors (or APT:s working for them) would ever need to black-box hack their way into a network made up by cameras from a domestic company. They’d just put a gag order on the company and force them into handing over silent backdoor access. In order of preference: using an existing backdoor for LEO:s, adding a new one in a firmware update, or requesting all source code so they can develop an exploit on their own.