Dahua Selling Protestor / Banner Alarms, Deletes Evidence

Political protests are quickly suppressed in the PRC, most famously with the recent Beijing Bridge Man banner. Dahua is offering a technological solution to this with AI analytics that automatically detect and report protest signs and protestors' faces to PRC police.

IPVM also found Infinova lists cameras with this kind of analytics. IPVM is the first to report on the existence of this type of solution.

Dahua deleted all evidence shortly after IPVM reached out. For more on PRC alarms on protestors, journalists, and religious/ethnic minorities, see:

• Dahua Provides "Uyghur Warnings" To China Police
• Shanghai Police Track Uyghurs And Foreign Journalists Visiting Xinjiang
• Hikvision Wins PRC Police Project To Predict Protesters Entering Capital
• Hikvision Platform Set Alarms On Falun Gong, Protesters, Religion

Neither Dahua nor Infinova responded to comment requests.

"Banner_Alarm" On AI Platform

Launched in 2021, Dahua's "Jinn" AI platform (大华巨灵AI开放平台), offers various analytics such as detecting hard hats on a construction site, indoor smoking, worker idle time, etc.

One solution, called "Unfurl Banner" (拉横幅), is listed under the "social safety" (社会治安) category and generates alarms at any detected protest sign:

in the designated area, if a person holding a banner is detected and lasts for a certain period of time, an alarm will be generated [emphasis added]

指定区域内，检测到人举横幅且持续一定时间则产生报警

Dahua did a demo of the system with the English words "banner_alarm" on the top left. The demo also shows that protestors' faces are automatically detected and recorded as part of the same solution:

The slogan reads: "Fight For 70 days, Fight in the Cold Winter, Win" (战70天, 拼在寒冬, 赢下). IPVM could not find any mention of this slogan outside of this Dahua demo. It is unclear if this refers to anything specific or is just invented for demo purposes.

No OCR Evidence

Dahua's system does not mention optical character recognition (OCR) i.e. there is no evidence that the system can automatically identify what the slogan on the banner is or be set to alert only to specific words or slogans. Conceptually, technically, this would not be particularly difficult to implement as OCR is well established and banners tend to be large, making it easy for cameras to process.

Intended For PRC Authorities

Dahua's use of the terms "social safety" (社会治安) and "social governance" (社会治理) to describe this solution indicates that police and other PRC authorities are targeted users since these terms are specifically used in China to describe maintaining public order with enforcement determined by detailed criminal codes.

Demo From 2020, Available In 2023

IPVM found these protestor alarms live and available in May 2023 though this may have been offered for years as the banner image was timestamped in November 2020.

Intended for City Squares, Roads, Halls

Dahua's solution states it is intended for "indoor halls or relatively empty outdoor [city] squares, roads, and other scenes" (室内大厅或室外较空旷的广场，马路等场景).

Targets Banners 100-500 Pixels

Dahua's solution also states it automatically detects "banners or placards" that appear 100-500 pixels in size in 1080P resolution (常见的多边形横幅或标语牌，目标大小在1080P下100~500像素).

Infinova, Others List Same Feature

Two Infinova cameras also include "unfurled banner detection" (拉横幅检测) capabilities: the VH311-B5 5MP bullet camera and the VS211-A60B-AJ0-T 8MP bullet camera:

Support rich intelligent analysis functions

2 behavioral analysis tests: throwing objects from high buildings, unfurl banner detection

支持丰富的智能分析功能

2项行为分析检测：高空抛物、拉横幅检测 [emphasis added]

Other smaller PRC companies offer this analytics too, such as Kaola Uran and the AI algorithm marketplace Extreme Mart.

Protesting In China Background

While Article 35 of the PRC constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, protestors and those displaying banners are regularly arrested due to extensive PRC laws against "disrupting public order" and "hampering social administration", a PRC lawyer explains.

Still, unfurling a banner ("拉横幅") is frequently used to express grievances e.g. this 2016 Hunan teacher protest over unpaid wages demanding authorities "secure teachers' benefits according to the laws" (依法保障教师待遇):

More famously, China's 2022's anti-lockdown protests were inspired by a man unfurling a banner in Beijing declaring "we don't want lockdowns, we want freedom" (不要封控要自由). The protestor was arrested on the spot and his whereabouts remain unknown.

PRC Banners Look Similar

Unlike in the US and Europe, where protest signs come in all shapes and sizes, in the PRC protest signs typically look quite similar, making it easier to build video analytics that can automatically detect them. IPVM found one training database with 100 pictures of different banners explicitly for creating such analytics:

Hikvision Comparison

Hikvision has also offered protestor alarms to PRC police:

• A Hikvision platform lists an alarm for "unlawful assemblies, processions, demonstrations" (非法集会、游行、示威) and alarms related to "gathering crowds" (聚众), IPVM and The Guardian reported in 2022.
• Hikvision won a 2022 contract to build a system which predicts the risk of protestors/"petitioners" (信访人) entering Beijing, IPVM and The New York Times reported.

However, Hikvision's alarms are not powered by video analytics, instead, they integrate with existing police systems for tracking protesters and particularly "petitioners" (信访人), a group that is intensely surveilled in the PRC.

Dahua Deletes Evidence

Before IPVM reached out to Dahua, the "social safety" (社会治安) category listed the detection of "Unfurled Banners" (拉横幅):

However, Dahua deleted the solution off its website shortly after IPVM reached out for comment i.e., "Unfurled Banners" (拉横幅) no longer appears. IPVM expected this and archived the Dahua webpage.

This is nothing new for Dahua which has a history of deleting evidence off its own website, e.g. Dahua Holds Xi Jinping Study Session, Then Hides (2021) and Dahua's Custom China Army VMS, Deletes Evidence (2022).

Dahua, Infinova No Response

Neither Dahua nor Infinova responded to repeated requests for this article. IPVM first reached out to the companies on May 25th (Dahua) and May 26th (Infinova), 4 to 5 days before we published.

UPDATE: Infinova's President Anna Liu says she is "not aware" of cameras with banner alarms being sold to police and Infinova's PRC sales are only 1% of total revenue. Note, Infinova made about $258m USD in sales for 2022 so this represents about $2.5m in sales.

Read her full statement below:

I am not aware of sales of these cameras to police. In general, Infinova’s camera sales in China are very low (about 1% of total revenue).

While Liu says she is "not aware" of sales to police, banner detection has no use cases (that IPVM could find) outside of PRC law enforcement. And while Infinova's China sales are low, even just one or several cameras with this capability could be used to round up protestors.