Scottish councils, police defend widespread use of Hikvision cameras

Hikvision security cameras are widely used in Scotland’s public CCTV networks and other facilities run by local governments and businesses, writes The Times.

There are 22 or more local councils in Scotland that use Hikvision cameras, out of 32 total councils. More than 1.5 million people live in the 9 councils that confirmed the use of Hikvision cameras within public CCTV networks.

Seven local authorities explicitly denied the use of Hikvision cameras in public CCTV networks, and three stated they do not use Hikvision cameras anywhere. Six did not respond to repeated questions on the topic.

A spokesperson for Police Scotland said that out of “a large number of CCTV cameras across the Police Scotland estate,” Hikvision makes or supplies components for “a number” of them.

“We are aware of the issues raised by the foreign affairs committee and will continue to engage with the Scottish government,” the spokesperson said.

The UK enacted a ban on the use of Hikvision cameras in sensitive government sites in November of 2022.

Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Brian Plastow noted that Hikvision cameras are not subject to a general ban, and the Police Scotland receives and acts on regular threat assessments from the UK’s intelligence community.

Former UK Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner Fraser Sampson, who demanded answers from the company on whether it sold cameras for use in Xinjian’s internment camps and whether the Chinese government can access facial images captured by Hikvision cameras in 2021, argues the company has not earned the UK’s trust.

“When it comes to increasingly intrusive surveillance by the police and local authorities you cannot ‘partly’ trust someone, and it appears to me that our government does not entirely trust some companies,” he told the Times.

Sampson also stated that the UK government’s decision not to ban the use of Hikvision cameras on grounds operated by public authorities or in police stations does not amount to an endorsement of the company’s data security bona fides.

London ranks among a group of Chinese cities for the highest ratio of public security cameras to people, though of course, as Sampson recently wrote in a guest post for Biometric Update, there is more to surveillance than public CCTV cameras.

UK sales for Hikvision actually increased in 2023, compared to 2022, prompting a call for their complete ban midway through last year. The controversy has already prompted UK government departments to cancel contracts and remove Hikvision installations in 2022, and Facewatch to stop using Hikvision cameras in March of 2023.

Hikvision laid off 1,000 staff in October and announced the cancellation of 5 surveillance contracts in the Xinjiang region in December, possibly in anticipation of further sanctions.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  China  |  data privacy  |  Fraser Sampson  |  HIKVISION  |  Scotland  |  Scottish Biometrics Commissioner  |  UK  |  video surveillance