Oct 2, 2026 · 42 min · 21 segments
**Listen to more of The Big Story here:** http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop Digging through manuals for security cameras, a group of gearheads found sinister details and ignited a new…
At a location he keeps secret, John Honovich was on his laptop, methodically scouring every link
on a website for a conference half a world
away.
Hikvision, the world's largest security camera manufacturer, was hosting the event.
the 2018 AI Cloud World Summit in its hometown of Hongzhou, a city of about 10 million people not far from Shanghai.
Honovich, the founder of a small trade publication that covered video surveillance technology, wanted to find out what the latest Hikvision gear could do.
He zeroed in on one section of the conference agenda titled Eco-Friendly, Peaceful, Relaxed, and found a description of an AI-powered system installed around Mount Tai, a historically sacred mountain in Shandong.
A video showed Hikvision cameras pointed at tourists climbing the thousands of stone steps leading to the famous peak.
The video cut to a shot of a computer screen, and Honovich hit pause.
He saw a zoomed-in view of one visitor's face.
Below it was data that the camera's AI had inferred.
Honovich downloaded the video and took screenshots of the computer screen, for safekeeping.
Later, with the help of a translator, he scrutinized every bit of text on that screen.
One set of characters, the translator explained, suggested each visitor was automatically sorted into categories.
Age, sex, wearing glasses, smiling.
When Honovich pointed at the fifth category and asked, what's this? The translator replied, minority.
Honovich pressed, are you sure? The translator confirmed there was no other way to read it.
Honovich was shocked.
In his many years in the industry, he'd never seen a surveillance company set out to automatically detect racial minorities.
The feature seemed completely unethical to him, and he immediately wondered how China might use it against the Uyghur people, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group in the province of Xinjiang.
Honovich had seen reports trickling out in the West of Uyghurs being selected to constrictive surveillance and mass detentions.
Clicking through the AI Summit website, Honovich couldn't tell whether Chinese authorities were using this technology to oppress minorities, but he saw that danger coalescing.
He quickly wrote up an article about Hikvision's ethnicity detection technology, including the video, screenshots, and a no comment from the company, and posted it on the website of IPVM, the trade publication he had founded.
He talked about the discovery with one of IPVM's reporters, Charles Rollet, a Frenchman who lives outside the U.S. and also keeps his location secret.
At a location he keeps secret, John Honovich was on his laptop, methodically scouring every link
on a website for a conference half a world
away.
Hikvision, the world's largest security camera manufacturer, was hosting the event.
the 2018 AI Cloud World Summit in its hometown of Hongzhou, a city of about 10 million people not far from Shanghai.
Honovich, the founder of a small trade publication that covered video surveillance technology, wanted to find out what the latest Hikvision gear could do.
He zeroed in on one section of the conference agenda titled Eco-Friendly, Peaceful, Relaxed, and found a description of an AI-powered system installed around Mount Tai, a historically sacred mountain in Shandong.
A video showed Hikvision cameras pointed at tourists climbing the thousands of stone steps leading to the famous peak.
The video cut to a shot of a computer screen, and Honovich hit pause.
He saw a zoomed-in view of one visitor's face.
Below it was data that the camera's AI had inferred.
Honovich downloaded the video and took screenshots of the computer screen, for safekeeping.
Later, with the help of a translator, he scrutinized every bit of text on that screen.
One set of characters, the translator explained, suggested each visitor was automatically sorted into categories.
Age, sex, wearing glasses, smiling.
When Honovich pointed at the fifth category and asked, what's this? The translator replied, minority.
Honovich pressed, are you sure? The translator confirmed there was no other way to read it.
Honovich was shocked.
In his many years in the industry, he'd never seen a surveillance company set out to automatically detect racial minorities.
The feature seemed completely unethical to him, and he immediately wondered how China might use it against the Uyghur people, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group in the province of Xinjiang.
Honovich had seen reports trickling out in the West of Uyghurs being selected to constrictive surveillance and mass detentions.
Clicking through the AI Summit website, Honovich couldn't tell whether Chinese authorities were using this technology to oppress minorities, but he saw that danger coalescing.
He quickly wrote up an article about Hikvision's ethnicity detection technology, including the video, screenshots, and a no comment from the company, and posted it on the website of IPVM, the trade publication he had founded.
He talked about the discovery with one of IPVM's reporters, Charles Rollet, a Frenchman who lives outside the U.S. and also keeps his location secret.
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