[Infowarrior] - China finds U.S. firms eager allies on security

[Richard Forno]

China finds U.S. firms eager allies on security
By Keith Bradsher
Thursday, December 27, 2007
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8926040

BEIJING: In preparation for the Beijing Olympics and a host of other
international events, some American companies are helping the Chinese
government to design and install one of the most comprehensive high-tech
public surveillance systems in the world.

When told of the companies' transactions, critics of China's human rights
record said the work violated the spirit of a sanctions law Congress passed
after the Tiananmen Square killings.

The Commerce Department, however, says the sophisticated systems that
Honeywell, General Electric, United Technologies and IBM are installing do
not run afoul of the ban on providing China "crime control or detection
instruments or equipment."

With athletes and spectators coming from around the world, every Olympic
host nation works to build the best security system it can. In an era of
heightened terrorism concerns, it could be argued, high-tech surveillance
systems will be an indispensable part of China's security preparations. And
given China's enormous economic potential, corporations are always anxious
to get a foothold here; the Olympics provide a prime opportunity.

But as the first authoritarian regime to host an Olympics since the former
Yugoslavia in 1984, China also presents particular challenges. Long after
the visitors leave, security industry experts say, the surveillance
equipment Western companies leave behind will provide authorities here new
tools to track not only criminals, but dissidents too.

"I don't know of an intelligence-gathering operation in the world that, when
given a new toy, doesn't use it," said Steve Vickers, a former head of
criminal intelligence for the Hong Kong police who now leads a consulting
firm.

Indeed, the autumn issue of the Chinese Public Security Ministry's magazine
prominently listed places of worship and Internet cafes as locations to
install new cameras.

A Commerce Department official who insisted on anonymity, said the agency
was reviewing its entire list of banned exports, including military and
crime control products. Asked whether equipment identified as commercial by
Western manufacturers could have crime control applications, the official
said, "There may be users in China who figure out law enforcement uses for
it."

Multinationals are reluctant to discuss their sales to China's security
forces, but they say they have done everything necessary to comply with
relevant laws.

Information is not easy to come by, but interviews with engineers at the
Public Security Ministry's biennial convention; visits to Chinese
surveillance camera factories and police stations; and reports on China
prepared for member-companies of the Security Industry Association, a trade
group based in Alexandria, Virginia, provide an outline of China's mammoth
effort. Interviews with security experts and executives in Asia and the
United States also provided previously unknown details about the systems
American companies are providing.

Honeywell has already started helping the police to set up an elaborate
monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of
Beijing's most heavily populated districts, the site of several Olympic
venues. The company is working on more expansive systems in Shanghai, to be
ready for the 2010 World Expo there - in addition to government and business
security systems in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Changsha, Tianjin, Kunming
and Xi'an.

General Electric has sold the Chinese authorities its powerful VisioWave
system, which allows security officers to control thousands of video cameras
simultaneously and automatically alerts them to suspicious or fast-moving
objects, like people running. The system will be deployed at the Beijing
national convention center, including the Olympics media center.

IBM is installing a similar system in Beijing that should be ready before
the Olympics. It will analyze and catalog people and behavior.

Julie Donahue, IBM's vice president for security and privacy services, told
a technology news service this month that by next summer IBM would install
in Beijing its newly developed Smart Surveillance System, a powerful network
that links large numbers of video cameras. IBM refused repeated requests to
answer questions about the system, or discuss her remarks.

United Technologies flew three engineers from its Lenel security subsidiary
in Rochester, New York, to Guangzhou to customize a 2,000-camera network in
a single large neighborhood, the first step toward a city-wide network of
250,000 cameras to be installed before the 2010 Asian Games. The company is
also seeking contracts to build that network.

Critics argue that all these programs violate the spirit, if not the letter,
of the 1990 U.S. law banning the export of "crime control or detection
instruments or equipment" to China.

The Commerce Department, charged with developing regulations that implement
the law, disagrees. The department bars exports for which the sole use is
law enforcement, like equipment for detecting fingerprints at crime scenes.
But video systems are allowed if they are "industrial or civilian intrusion
alarm, traffic or industrial movement control or counting systems,"
according to the regulations.

Since multinationals increasingly manufacture some security systems in
China, export rules are irrelevant. But the post-Tiananmen law also
prohibits companies from using American security technology anywhere in the
world to supply China with banned products.

The companies note that the products they provide are not banned by the
government. Honeywell said that it complies with the letter and spirit of
the laws in every country where it operates. General Electric said it had
reviewed the VisioWave sale to China and believed that it complied fully
with both the letter and spirit of the law.

United Technologies said that the equipment it is selling for Guangzhou is
not banned under the legislation. And IBM said that it complies with
American regulations.

James Mulvenon is the director of the Center for Intelligence Research and
Analysis, a government contractor in Washington that does classified
analyses on overseas military and intelligence programs.

He said the companies' participation in Chinese surveillance "violates the
spirit of the Tiananmen legislation."

Representative Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who is chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, "U.S.-based companies obviously don't
know the meaning of decency if they're seeking out ways to wriggle through
the loopholes in our laws to capitalize on the market opportunities
presented by the Olympics."

He said his committee would continue to investigate what he sees as American
corporate assistance for political repression.

Mulvenon noted that the pace of technological change means that products
with mainly civilian applications, like building management computer systems
with powerful video surveillance features, had blurred the distinction
between law enforcement and civilian technologies. But he said the Commerce
Department has tended to define narrowly the technologies that qualify as
crime control and prevention.

A Commerce Department official said the department's bureau of industry and
security had prevented the export of a "medium-tech" product to China for
the Olympics that was clearly intended for law enforcement use. The official
declined to identify the product and insisted on anonymity because he was
not authorized to speak for the department. Olympics security spending
increased rapidly this year, following China's little-noticed decision last
winter to create more than 600 "safe cities" nationwide through the
establishment of surveillance camera networks.

A table in the autumn edition of the security ministry's magazine suggested
the number of surveillance cameras that should be installed in each
community, based on its size, international prominence and location - from
250,000 to 300,000 cameras in metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai to
1,000 to 5,000 cameras for small towns and rural counties.

That would still leave major Chinese cities behind London in the scope of
their security camera systems. London already has as many as 500,000 cameras
if video systems at banks, supermarkets and other commercial locations are
included. But government agencies in London have installed smaller, separate
systems of a few hundred cameras at a time, in contrast with the highly
integrated approach of the Chinese government.

In New York City, the police are trying to assemble a network of 3,000
public and private cameras below Canal Street to discourage terrorism in
Lower Manhattan; they are starting with 100 cameras.

China does not have sufficient security guards to watch the video feeds from
so many cameras, so the authorities have been shopping for foreign computer
systems that automatically analyze the information, security executives
said.

At the security equipment convention this year - in Shenzhen, the center of
China's security industry - multinationals competed with local companies to
offer high-technology products, as police officials from around the country
browsed the booths.

Part of the sales pitches from American companies is that their systems can
protect local police during incidents of alleged police abuse. When a car in
Beijing hit an elderly foreign tourist, the police used Honeywell systems to
check a nearby street camera and discovered that the tourist had been
jaywalking, said He Han, a Honeywell engineer who worked on the system.

"We were one of the first to introduce foreign advanced products and
management practices," He said. "We have the biggest user network in China."
If American companies do not sell security systems here, Chinese companies
will; the Shenzhen conference drew a handful of American companies, but
about 800 of the nearly 1,000 exhibitors were Chinese - and they were
aggressively pursuing contracts.

The young engineers in jacket and tie at the American booths stood in sharp
contrast, for example, to a Chinese company's booth with a half dozen young
women in black patent leather boots, five-inch heels and metallic silver
micro-mini dresses.

China is likely to emerge from the Olympics with remarkable surveillance
capabilities, Vickers, the former head of criminal intelligence for the Hong
Kong police, said. "They are certainly getting the best stuff," he added.
"One, because money talks, and second, because whatever the diplomatic
issues, the U.S. wants to supply the Olympics."