The Australian government will investigate surveillance technology used in Defense Department offices, Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Thursday after Chinese-made cameras there posed a security risk.
In November Britain asked its government departments to stop installing Chinese-linked surveillance cameras in sensitive buildings, citing security risks. Some US states have banned vendors and products from several Chinese technology companies.
“It is an issue and … we are assessing all the technology for surveillance within the (Department) of Defense and where those particular cameras are found, they will be removed,” Marles told ABC Radio in an interview. . ,
Opposition MP James Paterson said his own audit had revealed around 1,000 units of equipment by Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and Dahua Technology Co – two partly state-owned Chinese firms – installed in more than 250 Australian government offices were done.
Patterson, the shadow minister for cyber security and countering foreign interference, urged the government to urgently come up with a plan to remove all such cameras.
Marles said the issue was important, although he added: “I don’t think we should overstate it.”
Hikvision said it was “categorically wrong” to present the company as a threat to Australia’s national security because it could not access end-users’ video data, manage end-user databases or operate in Australia. Could sell cloud storage.