Chinese tech groups shaping UN facial recognition standards...[ What The UN! ]

Chinese tech groups shaping UN facial recognition standards

Companies hope to gain an edge by laying the groundwork for global rules

Dec 2 2019





Chinese tech groups shaping UN facial recognition standards Companies hope to gain an edge by laying the groundwork for global rules China is the pacesetter in facial recognition technology, particularly in Africa, which means the International Telecommunications Union must consider its standards 
Beijing YESTERDAY.

Chinese technology companies are shaping new facial recognition and surveillance standards at the UN, according to leaked documents obtained by the Financial Times, as they try to open up new markets in the developing world for their cutting-edge technologies. Companies such as Huawei, ZTE, Dahua and China Telecom are among those proposing new international standards — specifications aimed at creating universally consistent technology — in the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for facial recognition, video monitoring, city and vehicle surveillance. Standards ratified in the ITU, which comprises nearly 200 member states, are commonly adopted as policy by developing nations in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where the Chinese government has agreed to supply infrastructure and surveillance tech under its “Belt and Road Initiative”, according to experts. “African states tend to go along with what is being put forward by China and the ITU as they don’t have the resources to develop standards themselves,” said Richard Wingfield, head of legal at Global Partners Digital, a company working on human rights on the internet. Europe and North America have their own regional standards setting bodies, such as the IETF, IEEE and 3GPP, which are dominated by domestic industry players. 
The ITU, on the other hand, is a space where companies outside of North America and Europe tend to shape and drive standard development. Weekly newsletter Your crucial orientation to the billions being made and lost in the world of Asia Tech. A curated menu of exclusive news, crisp analysis, smart data and the latest tech buzz from the FT and Nikkei. Sign up here with one click Standard writing gives companies an edge in the market by aligning global rules with the specifications of their own proprietary technology, say experts. Over the past few years, Chinese surveillance infrastructure has swept across regions from Angola to Zimbabwe. For example, earlier this year South African company Vumacam installed 15,000 surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities in Johannesburg, supplied by Hikvision. In August, Uganda confirmed the nationwide installation of Huawei surveillance cameras with face recognition capabilities. Similarly, the Singapore government plans to install facial recognition cameras on its lampposts, a contract that Chinese start-up Yitu has bid for, according to local reports. ITU standards are increasingly being authored by companies as opposed to government officials, according to members of international ITU delegations, and China’s influence in drafting and setting the standards at the UN has grown in recent years. When it comes to facial recognition [these standards are] extremely dangerous from a human rights perspective Mehwish Ansari, Article 19 ITU standards, which usually take around two years to be drafted and adopted, are highly influential in setting the rules around how tech is developed and used, particularly in the developing world. Drafts are put forward by companies and governments, and are then discussed at meetings involving representatives from several member states, before final approval. “A number of Chinese companies have really started to rise and seize market share around the world in these areas [such as face recognition and visual surveillance],” said Steven Feldstein, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an American think-tank, where he recently published a study about the global expansion of AI surveillance. “It’s a deliberate investment prioritisation by the Chinese state to help flourish the [AI] sector, and we are now seeing the fruits of that.” Data from African markets is of particular interest to Chinese companies, who are looking to improve the accuracy of their facial recognition algorithms, particularly to identify people of colour. For instance, a deal between Chinese facial recognition company CloudWalk and the government of Zimbabwe means the latter will send data on millions of African faces to the Chinese company to help train the technology. Developing standards to improve the quality of AI products and services may also increase social acceptance of new technologies in new markets. “Specifying methods for testing and assessing facial recognition systems or service robots to prevent high-profile accidents could cultivate societal trust in these new technologies,” according to a 2018 report from US think-tank the New America Foundation. According to academics, the Chinese government views standards as playing a significant role in the country’s aspirations for AI leadership. “The drive to shape international standards . . . reflects longstanding concerns that Chinese representatives were not at the table to help set the rules of the game for the global Internet,” the authors of the New America report wrote. “The Chinese government wants to make sure that this does not happen in other ICT spheres, now that China has become a technology power with a sizeable market and leading technology companies, including in AI.” The proposals currently being discussed at the ITU have been criticised by human rights lawyers as crossing the line from technical specifications to policy recommendations, including outlining use cases and data requirements for facial recognition and other surveillance technologies. “There are virtually no human rights, consumer protection, or data protection experts present in ITU standards meetings so many of the technologies that threaten privacy and freedom of expression remain unchallenged in these spaces,” said Mehwish Ansari, who leads ITU work at Article 19, a digital human rights non-profit. “When it comes to facial recognition [these standards are] extremely dangerous from a human rights perspective.” Recommended FT Magazine Who’s using your face? The ugly truth about facial recognition Requirements in the draft standard for facial recognition, which is expected to be completed before the end of 2019 and will be fast-tracked for approval, stipulate a requirement to store detected facial features in a database, including race, skin colour, face style, birthmarks, scars and other demographic features. Suggested uses for facial recognition technology include the examination of people in public spaces by the police, confirmation of employee attendance at work, and the arrest of criminals, specifically by comparing “the country’s fugitive library with the local population library” to smoke out “local hiding criminal fugitives”. Other use cases outlined include “black list alarms” that can be used to spot specific targets in schools, temples, airports, hospitals, malls, neighbourhoods and “other crowded places”. Another proposal put forward by ZTE and China Mobile, which was accepted as a standard in June, laid out “requirements and functional architecture of a smart street light service”, including an option to “add video monitoring capabilities when deploying smart street lights”. “Unsurprisingly the requirements set out in the [standard] reflect the design of ZTE’s Smart Street 2.0 street light, including back-end architecture and functionality,” said one source who works closely with the ITU. “This places ZTE at a significant advantage over its competitors.” The American Civil Liberties Union and others have raised concerns about street light surveillance, which can be used to ubiquitously identify and track people in public, as protesters in Hong Kong recently complained. “You’ve got competing ideas about standards — they aren’t purely neutral from a human rights perspective,” said Mr Wingfield, who raised concerns that at the ITU there is a lack of transparency about how decisions are reached and very limited participation from civil society. Bilel Jamoussi, chief of the ITU Study Groups Department, said in a statement: “The principles underlying the ITU standardisation process aim to ensure that all voices are heard and that resulting standards have the consensus-derived support of the diverse, globally representative ITU membership.” But he noted that it is rare for civil society and consumer protection organisations to attend standards setting meetings.

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China unchecked in Antarctica

What is China doing down there? Truth is, we don’t know for sure.

Updated 12 Apr 2019

Flying high in the skies above Antarctica’s ice in late 2016, the former head of the Australian Antarctic Division was on a spectacular mission.

The Antarctic Treaty System bars military activity or mineral exploration and it is up to scientists like Nicholas Gales to ensure their neighbours are doing as they should.

His goal that day was to complete the first inspection of the remote American base at the South Pole by a nation unaided by the Americans themselves.

“We flew in under our own resources with one of our chartered ski-equipped aircraft, a Basler,” he told a parliamentary committee less than a year later.

Dr Nicholas Gales and colleagues during the historic inspection of the US base. Supplied: AAD/Jason Roberts

“We spent two days at the station undertaking that full inspection and then came out through (coastal US station) McMurdo on the way out.”

This was the only inspection of another station Australia has undertaken in the past eight years.

While getting to the South Pole was an achievement, of perhaps greater significance was the base Dr Gales didn’t visit.

“We were going to undertake an inspection of another country on the way through, one of the Chinese bases, but it was not operating from there during that summer.”

All up, China’s most audaciously located station — at the high point of Antarctica’s vast ice sheet at the heart of Australian Antarctic Territory — has seen 10 summers.

This is a decade marked by incredible expansion of Chinese activity. Yet this station, as well as one another Chinese base within Australia’s claim, have never been inspected.

Many are saying it’s time for a check-up.

Expanding international activity in Antarctica and the need to protect claims to sovereignty mean Australia must do more down south, according to prominent polar researchers.

The continent is governed by international law banning military activity or mineral exploration and freezing territorial claims, for now.

Anne-Marie Brady from the University of Canterbury believes that hasn’t stopped countries jostling for position and preparing for a time when this arrangement changes.

“Countries participate in Antarctic Treaty governance but you can see in many instances backup plans and contingency plans that countries are engaging in.”

ANU’s Don Rothwell, an international law expert, warns Australia’s claim is at risk by inaction.

“If we don’t effectively seek to manage that claim and exercise our sovereignty over that claim, well, then others will perceive some level of weakness in terms of Australia’s position,” he said.

“They might seek to exploit that weakness into the future.”

Though they note other nations such as Russia and the United States have at times tested treaty arrangements, both Professor Brady and Professor Rothwell harbour specific concerns over China’s activity in Antarctica.

“China is active all across this sector within East Antarctica, quite a sizeable chunk of what Australia calls the Australian Antarctic Territory,” Professor Brady said.

Professor Rothwell is wary of China’s commitment to the treaty given its record in the South China Sea.

“I think there’s always that concern that given China’s position on some areas of international law, is China perhaps preparing itself to make some radically alternative arguments into the future which would not certainly be in Australia’s interests,” he said.

Investigating China’s bases

Kunlun was established in 2009 and is one of continent’s most isolated stations. Taishan was set up five years later.

“China is expanding its military and modernising its military and the Arctic and Antarctic have an important part to play in that,” Professor Brady said.

“I’m talking in particular about the rollout of China’s GNS (global navigation satellite) system, which is called BeiDou, and BeiDou is a rival to the US-led system GPS.”

New Zealand’s Strategic Defence Policy Statement issued last year noted the “difficulty in distinguishing between allowed and prohibited activities” under the treaty could be used by states seeking to carry out a range of military activities.

“Why this is all important is because of the GPS systems of China, Russia and the US: in a time of war they become really crucial, they’re used for missile timing and positioning,” Professor Brady said.

An inspection of one of these bases costs half a million dollars, according Antarctic Division estimates.

Australia’s annual Antarctic budget is close to 400 times that, and a new runway, icebreaker ship and more infrastructure are in the works.

But despite growing international activity by China and other nations, inspections have not been prioritised.

Dr Gales’ 2016 visit to the American South Pole base is the only time an Australian team has inspected a base since 2011.

In recent decades Australia abandoned its capability to traverse into the interior of the continent in order to focus on shipping and coastal activity.

That was a point highlighted by last year’s parliamentary committee report, which called on a resumption of inspections in the coming Antarctic summer.

In the short time since the report was delivered, China continued construction in Antarctica.

Its fifth base just outside the Australian claim in the Ross Sea is being established. (An artist’s depiction of the base, provided by China as part of its assessment of environmental risks, is at the top of the article).

And significant work has been undertaken at the Taishan station, midway between the coast and Kunlun station.

 WallRoss Sea

 WallRoss Sea

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RunwayVehiclesStation

 facilities including sensors and antennae

 expansion

Imagery: Digital Globe

This satellite image, taken in January, shows massive expansion of theBut what imagery is available shows significant expansion between 2010 and 2017.

Kunlun research station in 2010 Google Earth

The expanded Kunlun station in 2017 Digital Globe

Hover and slide

Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who sat on the recent parliamentary inquiry into Antarctica, wants inspections to resume this summer.

“Australians want Antarctica to be a place where there’s no military activity, no mining and we maintain its environmental significance,” he said.

“The best way to ensure everyone is abiding by the treaty is to conduct more inspections than what we are currently doing.”

It is also clear that Washington is increasingly anxious about China’s ambitions in the territory and would like to see Australia do more to monitor Beijing’s activities.

ABC News: Emma Machan

During the parliamentary hearings, Dr Gales admitted that Australia was doing as many as it could within its “operational capacity” at the moment.

He maintained that cooperation with China has been good for Australian science, but he also revealed he would want the “capability to undertake treaty inspections a little more regularly”.

For Professor Rothwell, the Antarctic Treaty is creaking as it reaches its 60th birthday.

“We’ve now got a proliferation of states involved in Antarctica with a proliferation of scientific bases and stations,” he said.

“And that’s raised a real issue in terms of capacity in terms of the ability of states to keep tabs on each other, the costs involved in terms of scientific inspection.”

Dr Gales has since retired. ABC sought an interview with his replacement at the Antarctic Division, Kim Ellis, former head of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, but he declined.

In a video produced by the Antarctic Division marking his arrival in February, Mr Ellis said that “there is going to have to a significant element of change in the division going forward”.

An Antarctic Division spokesperson maintains that Australia conducts inspections “regularly”.

The sun will set at Australia’s Davis Station for six weeks at the end of May.

Australia’s 2019-20 Antarctic season is set to formally commence in November.