The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and the Australian War Memorial have followed in the footsteps of the Australian Government Defence Department regarding ditching Chinese-made cameras.
The Australian Defence Department will remove surveillance cameras made by Chinese Community Party-linked companies from its buildings after the US and Britain made similar decisions, according to the Associated Press.
The Australian government and agency offices have at least 913 cameras, intercoms, electronic entry systems, and video recorders developed and manufactured by Chinese companies Hikvision and Dahua, both partly owned by China's Community Party-ruled government.
In November, the US government said it would ban telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from several Chinese brands, including Hikvision and Dahua, to protect the country's communications network.
During the same month, the British government banned security cameras made by Hikvision from its government buildings.
Associated Press reported that China's Embassy in Australia has not yet commented on the issue. Instead, its general response is to defend its hi-tech companies as good corporate citizens who follow local laws and play no part in government or party intelligence gathering.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said the department continues to assess its surveillance technology.
“Where those particular cameras are found, they're going to be removed,” Marles told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “There is an issue here, and we're going to deal with it.”
Opposition cybersecurity spokesman James Paterson – who questioned federal agencies for over six months after the Home Affairs Department was unable to say how many of the cameras, access control systems, and intercoms were installed in government buildings – said: “We urgently need a plan from the ... government to rip every one of these devices out of Australian government departments and agencies.
“We would have no way of knowing if the sensitive information, images, and audio collected by these devices are secretly being sent back to China against the interests of Australian citizens.”
