Israeli police are installing Chinese-made license plate recognition (LPR) cameras as part of their “Hawkeye” traffic enforcement project, but these do not meet the standards required in Western countries such as the United States or the Netherlands.
According to information obtained by Globes, most of the cameras used by the Israeli police for domestic surveillance as part of the Hawkeye project are made in China, specifically by Dahua. The police also use cameras made by Chinese company HikVision, two companies that have been banned from several Western national infrastructures in recent years.
Controlling the world market
In 2021, Dahua and Hikvision, along with Huawei, China Telecom, and ZTE, were blacklisted by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as companies that endanger US national security. The US Congress also enacted a special law banning the import and sale of Chinese companies’ products, including Dahua and Hikvision surveillance cameras, by government-affiliated enterprises and organizations relying on the federal budget.
Amsterdam city officials also announced that they would replace about 1,300 Chinese-made street cameras installed on the city’s streets within five years due to concerns about espionage and suspicions of complicity in human rights violations in the communist country. Moreover, as far as is known, Israeli defense companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) are also required not to use any of the cameras due to U.S. suspicions about the Chinese cameras.
Dahua and Hikvision were founded in 2001 in Hangzhou, 200 kilometers south of Shanghai. The two companies dominate the global security camera market, with Hikvision having a 40% share and Dahua having a 25% share. The remaining 35% market share is mostly held by Western companies. The Chinese government owns a 39% stake in Hikvision and a 12% stake in Dahua.
Both companies are subject to sanctions and boycotts by many Western countries: Dahua has been sanctioned by the US, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and the UK; Hikvision has been subject to sanctions and other measures by the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia, Ukraine, South Korea and India.
Despite concerns about espionage, Israeli police have opted to install Chinese-made cameras on the country’s roads, which are a relatively cheap commodity with good technical reliability and have been “proven feasibility” in China for many years. According to regulations, the cameras are only intended to track license plates, but lawyer Gil Gan-Mor, director of the civil rights department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), said the system also stores close-up images of the vehicle, including the driver and passengers. He added that police can cross-check the data with other databases, such as a license plate database, to link the vehicle to its owner.
The cameras deployed in Israel do not yet have facial recognition capabilities, but Gan-Mor says the cabinet had already voted before the outbreak of war to also support biometric authentication, although the law has yet to go into effect. “You can glean a lot of information just from a photo of a car driving down the road,” Gan-Mor says. “You can see if the drive is unusual, where the destination is, and if the destination is somewhere embarrassing for the driver, that information could be used against him. Placing cameras near sensitive locations adds a security dimension to the problems with camera systems.”
ACRI contacted the Attorney General before petitioning the Supreme Court to strike down the law that allows police to keep all footage, including footage of innocent citizens, for two years. In ACRI’s view, this is equivalent to mobile tracking and can be done without a court order. ACRI also argues that the intended use of the system is very broad and is not limited to investigating serious crimes or locating criminals.
“The police are taking all necessary measures to ensure the security of the data and prevent any leaks,” the Israeli police said in a statement.
“The people interviewed in the article appear to be biased and have interests unrelated to the issue,” Hikvision said.
“Hikvision cameras do not have any targeted security issues, and other cameras have not demonstrated a higher level of cybersecurity.
“Hikvision cameras are popular all over the world, including Western countries and Israel, due to their highly technical quality, safety, reliability and fair price.
“Hikvision cameras meet the recommendations and regulations of the Israel National Cyber Authority, the government agency responsible for data security in the State of Israel and the protection of the national civilian cyberspace. The Authority has issued instructions to mitigate data security risks in cameras, and Hikvision cameras comply with all of these.”
“Hikvision cameras also meet the most stringent international standards, including compliance with the US Federal Data Security Risk FIBS 140 standard, and laboratory tests have confirmed that Hikvision cameras have a very high level of security.
“Thus, Israeli public authorities and large private entities benefit from the safe and proper use of Hikvision cameras, after carrying out inspections of the products and determining that they are safe for use from a cybersecurity point of view. Several countries around the world that do not encourage the use of Hikvision cameras do so for political motivations or as a result of the trade war with China and have nothing to do with the security level of the products.
There was no response from Dahua.
