At least three European technology companies, including one from the Netherlands, supply advanced surveillance technology to Chinese security services. Amnesty International reports this after its own investigation.
According to Amnesty, the companies are at great risk of contributing to human rights violations. This form of export is currently not prohibited, but Amnesty wants European rules to be adopted to adjust this.
These are companies from Sweden, France and Wageningen. The latter company, Noldus Information Technology, sold emotion recognition systems to agencies that Amnesty said are affiliated with Chinese public safety and law enforcement organizations. Amnesty says Noldus did not have a clear answer to the question of what research it conducted before selling its systems.
Such a facial expression analysis system has been found to be used in a number of Chinese universities associated with the police and public security apparatus. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security also uses the software to investigate the behavior of high-ranking persons suspected of corruption.
‘Meets all ethical standards’
Noldus said in a response that the company’s products do not pose a human rights risk and meet all ethical standards. According to the company, the software that Noldus makes is not surveillance technology, but is only intended for behavioral research.
The Chinese universities in question have purchased the software for scientific research for which the participants must always give permission, Noldus says.
Better regulation
Amnesty is calling on the European Union to better regulate the rules in this area at a meeting on export regulations on Tuesday. For example, now there is no control on the export of software in the field of emotion and ethnicity recognition. Facial recognition software should be banned, according to the organization.
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