According to Australia’s defense minister, it is essential to make facilities secure, so the country will remove Chinese-made security cameras from public buildings to make them “completely secure”.
Fears that Chinese businesses would be coerced to share intelligence with Beijing’s security services prompted Britain to take action in November of last year.
According to official statistics provided by an opposition member, the security cameras were installed in more than 200 Australian government facilities, including at least one managed by the Department of Defense.
Officials would locate and take down all of these cameras at military facilities, according to Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles.
He informed national network ABC that “that’s a big item that’s been brought to our attention and we’re going to rectify it.”
The businesses that produced the cameras, Hikvision and Dahua, have both been placed on a US blacklist.
Because it presented “an intolerable risk to national security,” the US banned the importation of surveillance equipment made by Hikvision and Dahua in November of last year.
Following accusations that Hikvision and Dahua’s equipment had been used to snoop on Uyghurs in Xinjiang, a group of 67 MPs and lords in Britain urged the government to outlaw both companies in July of last year.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock was fired in June 2021 after a Hikvision camera recorded him kissing an assistant in breach of Covid standards.
