USA: Government expands blacklist of surveillance tech companies due to human rights concerns
"US blacklists Chinese companies linked to Uighur abuses" 28 May 2020.
Two United States government bodies have moved within a week to authorize or impose new sanctions against Chinese officials and companies over their role in human rights violations in Xinjiang.
On May 27, the House voted in favor of a bill that — if signed into law by President Donald Trump — would punish officials responsible for the mass detention of Uighurs and other minorities.
The vote took place days after the U.S. Commerce Department expanded its economic blacklist to include nine Chinese entities accused of enabling Beijing’s abuses against Muslims at home.
The listing — the second of its kind — imposes export license requirements on 33 Chinese firms and universities including eight that are “complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs” and other minorities in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, according to a statement by the U.S. Commerce Department...
...Among the companies recently blacklisted for “enabling China’s high-technology surveillance” in Xinjiang is Nanjing FiberHome Starrysky Communication Development, a cybersecurity and data analysis firm partly owned by the Chinese state. FiberHome was identified in a New York Times report as the producer of a software that Xinjiang officials installed on foreign visitors crossing the border. The app scans a phone and generates a report containing all contacts, text messages, calendar entries and call records it finds in the device. It’s not clear how Chinese officials were using the information they collected, the NYT wrote.
Other sanctioned entities include cybersecurity company Qihoo360 and CloudWalk Technology Ltd., which makes facial recognition systems.
In response to the latest Commerce Department action, the companies said the U.S. is “politicizing business” and claimed “unfair treatment.”