U.S. to Lead Global Effort to Curb Authoritarians’ Access to Surveillance Tools – WSJ
U.S. to Lead Global Effort to Curb Authoritarians’ Access to Surveillance Tools
Administration official cites China’s use of monitoring technologies, which Beijing has defended, in calling for tighter export rules
The WSJ carried an image of a surveillance camera overlooking a sidewalk in Beijing last month. U.S. companies have provided China with technology for monitoring its population.
Yuka Hayashi and Alex Leary Dec. 2, 2021 WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON—The U.S. plans to work with other countries to limit exports of surveillance tools and other technologies that authoritarian governments can use to suppress human rights, an alleged practice in China.
The Biden administration said Thursday that it would launch an initiative with friendly nations to establish a code of conduct for coordinating export-licensing policies. The effort would also see participating nations share information on sensitive technologies used against political dissidents, journalists, foreign government officials and human rights activists, administration officials said.
The initiative is set to be announced during the inaugural Summit for Democracy, a virtual gathering scheduled for Dec. 9-10, that will bring together more than 100 democratic governments seeking to form a bulwark against authoritarianism.
China and Russia, which weren’t invited, have jointly criticized the meeting, saying it would “stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world.”
In a briefing with reporters Thursday, a senior administration official said the world-wide growth of digital surveillance has spurred the U.S.-led effort.
“Technology is being misused by governments to surveil and, in some cases—as in the case of the PRC—to control their population,” the official said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
U.S. companies have provided China with technology to build a surveillance network for tracking political dissidents and ethnic minorities, including in the northwestern Xinjiang region, The Wall Street Journal and others have reported. The State Department deems Beijing’s forced assimilation campaign in Xinjiang, which is home Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, “genocide and crimes against humanity.”
China has rejected the genocide designation and repeatedly denied allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, defending its actions there as necessary to prevent violence from religious extremism. The U.S. companies involved have said they don’t have control over how their technology is used.
The U.S. wants to counter China’s influence around the world by providing everything from infrastructure to vaccines and green energy.
Biden administration officials said Thursday that stopping the flow of technology that can be used to suppress human rights requires a multilateral approach.
“This is a group of like-minded governments who will commit to working together to determine how export controls could better monitor and, as appropriate, restrict the proliferation of such technologies given their increasing misuse by end users in human rights abuses,” another senior administration official said.
Administration officials didn’t say which countries would be participating in the new effort but indicated it could include members of the Wassenaar Arrangement, an existing export-control program for weapons and sensitive technologies. That 42-member group includes the U.S.’s close allies in Europe, North America and East Asia as well as Russia.
The technologies to be covered by the new initiative will be similar to those already targeted by domestic U.S. policies linked to sensitive technologies that are used for legitimate law-enforcement and intelligence operations but are also increasingly deployed by nondemocratic actors.
In November, the Biden administration placed four cybersecurity companies from Israel, Singapore and Russia on an “entity list” for export prohibition that will restrict them from obtaining certain technologies from the U.S. That followed the administration’s announcement of a new regulation that will require companies to obtain licenses to sell hackling tools in countries like China and Russia. Washington has also placed producers of solar panel materials on an export control list as it condemned the use of forced labor among Xinjiang’s Muslim minorities.
The U.S. has also started working with friendly nations to scrutinize the sale of sensitive technologies through the “Quad group” of Pacific nations—the U.S., India, Japan and Australia—and through bilateral agreements with other Asian allies. Export control is also a key issue being addressed by the U.S. and the European Union through their newly launched Trade and Technology Council.
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