Additional Coverage:
- South Korea removed 1,300 cameras from its military bases after discovering they’re designed to feed back to a Chinese server (newsbreak.com)
South Korea’s military has removed over 1,300 surveillance cameras from its bases after discovering they were made in China and had the potential to transmit data to a Chinese server.
Korean intelligence agencies detected the cameras’ Chinese origins in July during an inspection. While some cameras were located near the North Korean border, they were not monitoring the area but rather focused on training bases and fences.
The discovery has sparked concerns, as several Western countries have cracked down on Chinese-made surveillance equipment over security risks. Two Chinese companies were blacklisted by the Trump administration in 2019, and others have been added to banned lists by the FCC and various countries.
The Chinese manufacturer of the cameras installed at South Korean bases has not been named, but the military is considering legal action against the supplier for potentially falsifying paperwork on the cameras’ origins.