Is Microsoft AI Helping To Deliver China's 'Shameful' Xinjiang Surveillance State?
When an ethical hacker exposed the SenseNets data breach, shining a light on the technologies including facial recognition being used to track Xinjiang Muslims in real time, there followed an online debate as to whether Microsoft 'partnered' with SenseNets, and whether they were aware of the inclusion of their technology in the dystopian surveillance program that has drawn international condemnation for the subjugation of the Muslim Uighur population of Xinjiang Province.The breach by the Shenzhen-based facial recognition company exposed a database of more than 2.5 million records: names and addresses; ID card numbers; dates of birth; passport photographs; employer details; and, most alarmingly, 6.5 million records relating to the GPS locations passed by those individuals in the prior 24 hours.
Information shared online appears to show the use of Microsoft technology (GitHub and Azure) within the SenseNets program, although Microsoft denies any partnership or commercial relationship with either SenseNets or its parent company. If the information that has been shared publicly is correct, and Azure Cognitive Services are being used, then either this has been procured through a different source or even personally by one or more of the developers themselves. If the technology was there, then it is quite likely to have been (or still be) a fundamental part of the program.
Microsoft has its own complicated relationship with facial recognition. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, CEO Satya Nadella said that “one of the things that I feel today is, in the marketplace, there’s competition; there’s no discrimination between the right use and the wrong use of facial recognition.”
And nowhere is that lack of discrimination between right and wrong more of an issue than in Xinjiang.
Victor Gevers, the hacker responsible for publishing the breach and sharing the Microsoft related information, tweeted at the time of the SenseNets breach that, "the company 微软 also known as Microsoft has been a precious partner who has turned more than once a blind eye to the (technical) / (mal)practices of the engineers of SenseNets. From pirated versions of Windows servers to offering Azure Cognitive services for Face (recognition)."
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