In 2019, horrifying footage from Xinjiang, China, stunned the world.
It showed shackled and blindfolded Uighur Muslims taken off a train
and marched into detention centers,
part of a broader campaign that’s been called a genocide.
The guards put a helmet on my shaved head.
Each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake.
In an effort to keep the Uighurs under constant watch,
China transformed the province
into one of the most heavily surveilled parts of the world.
Every Uighur over 12 years old
is forced to surrender their biometric data,
including voice, blood, DNA samples, and iris scans.
Now, China’s surveillance state is going global.
Chinese-based companies have sold their sophisticated technologies
to over 80 countries.
These systems make it easier
for autocrats to spy on their populations.
It’s giving them an unprecedented level of control
when it comes to the choices, communications,
and private transactions that citizens are making.
In Uganda, tech from Chinese companies like Huawei
is allegedly used to spy on government opposition figures.
I’ve been put under 24-hour surveillance.
All our phones are hacked.
And even in London,
which is the third most surveilled city in the world,
half of its councils use camera systems from companies
linked to the abuse of Uighurs.
In the UK, there’s an estimated 4 to 6 million CCTV cameras.
More governments are moving towards the Chinese model of censorship
and automated surveillance.
China is a prototype of
what the 21st-century digital authoritarianism is.
An unregulated global industry of spyware
is providing cheap spying tools to dictators.
Spyware from Israel’s NSO Group was used to hack and monitor
the family of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
As the Winter Olympics kick off in Beijing,
visiting foreign athletes have been warned not to speak out.
In November, tennis star Peng Shuai disappeared for weeks
after she accused a Chinese official of sexual assault.
When she reappeared, she denied the claim.
I have never spoken or written about anyone sexually assaulting me.
China is an example of the future in the democratic world
if we don’t constrain surveillance technologies now.
So how are surveillance technologies exported from China
being used to spread repression around the world?
In these centers, what they are doing
is exactly what we read in George Orwell’s novel
And as spyware and the surveillance state goes global,
can we trust those who are watching us from behind the camera?
[SYSTEM ERROR]
The region of Xinjiang has long been
a pressure point where China’s ethnic tensions have played out.
The government has repressed the Uighurs at an unprecedented level,
holding many in mass-scale detention centers.
Witness accounts, satellite imagery, and Communist Party documents
reveal what appears to be the largest imprisonment of people
on the basis of religion since the Holocaust.
The region has become the testing ground
for the next generation of surveillance tools.
An immense network of security cameras,
some equipped with facial recognition,
is constantly monitoring the streets.
You almost have what some have described as
a laboratory of digital surveillance,
where these AI companies have tested what is possible
when it comes to collecting all manner of information
and then using those
for fairly chilling and insidious security purposes.
And it's not just Xinjiang.
Many of these technologies are being deployed across the country,
from smart cities that use AI to contact the police
when it detects wanted criminals
to a social credit system that ranks you.
Everywhere she goes, Oh Young Hayou is followed.
What she buys, how she behaves is tracked and scored
to show how responsible and trustworthy she is.
When the Chinese citizen does something
or doesn’t do something,
this kind of system will rate them, will incentivize them
or punish them.
It provides a futuristic model
for controlling its 1.4 billion population.
We can see a lot of detailed labels here on the screen,
including the person’s clothing,
the color of the clothing, sex, and age.
When you put them together,
they enable not just individual surveillance
but surveillance that is practically total,
enabling the government to have insight into
the entirety of a community’s life.
Now, China’s digital authoritarianism is spreading beyond its borders.
In the past two decades,
Chinese companies like Huawei and Hikvision
have sold camera surveillance systems to dozens of countries,
many of which have poor human rights records.
They all have something in common:
They govern like autocrats.
These leaders are rising in an age where technology
can make their lives much easier.
China is not the only country
whose companies are selling this technology.
But what we do find is that in certain countries,
Chinese companies have been very aggressive
in terms of trying to introduce authorities to facial recognition,
to building surveillance networks
that can enhance the ability of security services to watch citizens.
Some countries are offered Chinese loans to pay for these systems.
It also secures a diplomatic relationship.
And the surveillance cameras
go with that kind of technical infrastructure power,
creating a certain dependency in those societies
that Chinese government can further exert influence on,
including making them in debt.
While there are legitimate reasons for surveillance,
the fear is that they will be used to monitor and repress dissent.
The problem is that
once governments get access to the tools of surveillance,
they can use them often to surveil journalists or activists
or those simply who are criticizing government.
That can very easily constitute a form of a human rights violation.
In Zambia and Uganda,
Huawei technicians have allegedly used cellphone data
to help governments spy on political opponents.
The issue of tapping communications
is done by government security agencies.
And they work hand in hand with Huawei.
Huawei rejects the claims,
but many still have questions.
You’re giving enhanced tools
to those regimes and their security services,
and so the natural question or result could be
an even greater propensity for abuse against their citizens.
There’s a fear that China is not just spreading its technology
but its methods.
The idea that a set of values like this are making their way
and are diffusing to other markets,
I think should be concerning
for those who care about human rights around the world.
And it's not just dictatorships.
Western countries are utilizing these tools too.
Numerous cities like London still employ surveillance systems
from Chinese companies Hikvision and Dahua
that are linked to the abuse of Uighurs.
Those surveillance tools that are widely used in Western world
were created by the Chinese companies,
they were tested on my people,
and my people suffered for it.
Some governments, such as the US and UK,
have placed major restrictions on Huawei and ZTE technology,
concerned that they may assist Beijing with intelligence gathering.
The best way to secure our networks
is for operators to stop using new affected Huawei equipment
to build the UK’s future 5G networks.
Chinese-based companies are required by law to hand data over
if requested by authorities.
It's a total black box.
You have no idea what’s being collected,
how it’s being used,
and what’s going to be the outcome from it.
And as a citizen in a country, particularly one where
there is a question about the protection of human rights,
this ought to raise alarm bells.
In previous eras, spying relied on an army of secret state operatives.
But today, a $12 billion shadow industry of tech firms
sells spyware to dictators across the globe.
On the 2nd of October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist,
walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul
to pick up his marriage license.
He would never be seen alive again.
Khashoggi quickly comes under attack.
He’s dragged to another room and is killed within minutes.
A squad of Saudi Arabian hitmen had killed and dismembered him.
Spyware called Pegasus, from Israeli-based company the NSO Group,
was found on the phones of Khashoggi’s families and friends.
Pegasus spyware allows the operators, the person using it,
to extract information from your phone,
to access the contents of your phone.
The NSO Group claims
it only sells its software to vetted government clients
for security purposes.
I can guarantee to you,
our technology was not used on Jamal Khashoggi
or his relatives.
But leaked documents in the Pegasus Papers
prove how it has been used to spy on activists and journalists.
It’s an interesting and very powerful example of transnational oppression,
how state actors are now reaching outside their borders
to persecute and pursue individuals that they want to silence
who are outside their jurisdiction.
This is a global problem.
French President Emmanuel Macron
was on a list of potential Pegasus targets,
according to a leaked database.
And the Rwandan government has used the spyware to target
the family of activist Paul Rusesabagina,
known for his portrayal in the film
There’s this notion that privacy is a luxury.
But in countries in Latin America, in Africa,
in many places in the world,
being surveilled can also facilitate being murdered , being kidnapped,
being exiled in prison.
This is a growing industry,
and the lack of transparency makes it nearly impossible to regulate.
There's no mechanism right now to really hold, for example,
a state to account when they authorize the sale of this technology
to another country.
It’s an industry that operates in the shadows.
And they’re often providing their technologies to clients,
to governments, to intelligence agencies,
to public security agencies
that themselves want to operate in the shadows.
There’s a lot of money in this,
and so there’s great incentive for companies to be in this space,
there’s no question about that.
But it’s dirty money.
Several countries, including the United States and Canada,
have declared a diplomatic boycott of Beijing's Winter Olympics.
We cannot proceed that there’s nothing wrong
with having the Olympics in a country that is engaged in genocide
and perpetrating human rights abuses.
Around the world,
many are finally reckoning with these new tools of repression.
There’s way more transparency around arms,
around the sale and transfer of weapons.
I think we have a better sense of how dangerous weapons proliferation is
but less of a sense of how dangerous cyberweapons proliferation is.
Many say a more unified approach is needed before it's too late.
And so if we don't constrain these tools now,
we face a future in which governments can abuse them relatively easily
in both authoritarian and democratic societies
My worst fear is that those violations of rights,
those surveillance tools
will no longer bother the world anymore
because it’s built into their homes, and they’re used to it.