This week, WIRED Magazine released a 5,000-word feature on IPVM, after spending nearly 2 years interviewing us and others, showing the broader public the significance of the work we do, and why we do it. As Wired put it,
Digging through manuals for security cameras, a group of gearheads found sinister details and ignited a new battle in the US-China tech war.
Some excerpts from the WIRED feature on IPVM:
IPVM’s writers unearthed one damning detail after another on Chinese surveillance gear. Their scoops would end up influencing national policy, changing those companies’ fortunes, and placing the reporters themselves squarely on the front lines of the US–China cold war.
Those early posts established not just a voice and market for IPVM but also an ethical framework based on uncompromising integrity.
“That’s one of the founding premises of IPVM: Being dishonest and unethical is a competitive advantage,” Honovich told me. Negating that advantage was IPVM’s raison d’être.
"I thought of something Honovich had told me: “If the Nazis were here, they would probably design user manuals for everything they built.” A sickening feeling came over me. This wasn’t evidence filtered through someone else’s description, subject to interpretation—it was a vile secret the internet had whispered just to me."
"IPVM played a crucial role in “exposing the Chinese government’s gross human rights abuses perpetrated with the help of its video security and surveillance systems,” US representative Claudia Tenney from New York, a cosponsor of the law, told me. “IPVM’s work is key to unearthing the full extent of the security risks posed by the CCP and state-controlled or -directed technology companies.”
The Congressional Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan group that monitors human rights and the rule of law in the country, cited Rollet’s coverage in its 2019 annual report, writing that “IPVM provided evidence that the video surveillance company Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology was directly involved in the construction, operation, and ongoing maintenance” of the Xinjiang surveillance system.
The article mentions various instances over the years where IPVM reporting uncovered unethical practices from companies such as Hikvision, Dahua, Huawei, and more (e.g., the flaws of fever cameras in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, or providing "the first direct evidence of Hikvision cameras being used in detention cells in Xinjiang"). It narrowly focuses on our PRC reporting, without mentioning our investigations of US companies save for a single allusion to our critique of Arecont Vision in 2011.
This is the second major mainstream profile of IPVM in the last year, also see The Atlantic's The Tech Site That Took On China’s Surveillance State.
Any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments.
