Export of security tech to China slammed

WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) -- A German firm says its face-recognition software was used by the Chinese Communist Party at its Congress last year, sparking protests from rights' groups.

Dresden, Germany, and Herndon, Va.-based Cognitec Systems Inc. announced last week in a statement that its technology was used in October 2007 at the Congress in Beijing, which it called "a prestigious national security event."

"We are once again very pleased with the successful deployment of a video surveillance system that includes our face-recognition technology," Alfredo Herrera, the firm's managing director, said in the statement.

"It is an honor for us to be selected by the Government of the People's Republic of China for such an important event," he said, adding the honor was especially notable in view of the fact that the choice was made after extensive tests, pitting Cognitec's software against the products of competing companies "under very stringent conditions."

The statement notes that the firm's FaceVACS-Alert software "can be added to conventional video surveillance systems in order to identify persons on a watch list, by comparing faces in real-time video images against stored photographs."

The technology could also be used, for instance, to compile a list of everyone who attended a certain event, by matching video of attendees' faces against photographs in a national identity database.

The sale of such surveillance technology to repressive regimes like China has brought criticism from rights advocates like the World Organization for Human Rights USA.

Companies "selling these types of products to China have to recognize that this type of technology often is misused by repressive regimes," said group President Morton Sklar.

Sklar said a number of U.S. laws prohibited export of crime control and law enforcement products to China, because Congress realized that the government there "frequently uses this technology not for legitimate law enforcement purposes, but to identify and punish political dissidents and human rights and democracy advocates, by causing their arbitrary arrest, long-term imprisonment and torture."

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Shaun Waterman, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor