Internet giant Alibaba provided “Uighur-detection-as-a-service” that could send customers an alert when a Uighur person was identified, according to a report by video surveillance researchers IPVM. IPVM is the same organization that revealed Huawei had validated software that recognized Uighurs, after discovering an internal report on the company’s own European website. Alibaba had also made little apparent effort to hide its system. IPVM said the firm had published details about the tech on the website of its cloud computing division. [Read: Famed footballer cuts ties with Huawei over AI ‘Uighur alert’] According to the researchers, the Alibaba Cloud site showed how customers could use the software to identify Uighurs from images and videos.
— Raymond Zhong (@zhonggg) December 17, 2020 References to the system may have now been deleted, but IPVM has published translated screenshots and archives of the pages. While fears around the role of Chinese tech firms in the repression of Uighurs have thus far centered on Huawei, the report suggests the surveillance runs far deeper than just one company.
