Australia to remove all Chinese-made surveillance cameras from government buildings following the discovery of surveillance balloons over the US and other sovereign nations.
“Where those particular cameras are, they will be removed,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC). “There is a problem here, and we will address it.”
Australia reportedly has 913 cameras, intercoms, electronic access systems and video recorders developed and manufactured by Chinese companies Hikvision and Dahua in government buildings and agency offices including the Department of Defense and the Department of Foreign Affairs and of trade.
The US government said in November it would ban telecommunications and video surveillance equipment made by Chinese brands, including Hikvision and Dahua, in order to better protect the nation’s communications network. Both Hikvision and Duhua are partly owned by the Chinese government, according to The Australian newspaper.
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Opposition cybersecurity spokesman James Paterson said he urged the government’s security audit by asking questions of each federal agency for six months.
People visit Hikvision booth during World Digital Industry Expo on March 24, 2021 in Zhengzhou, China. (Ma Jian/VCG via Getty Images)
“We urgently need a plan from the… government to wrest all of these devices from Australian government departments and agencies,” Paterson said. “We would have no way of knowing if sensitive information, images and audio collected by these devices are being secretly sent back to China against the interests of Australian citizens.”
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The renewed focus on security comes on the heels of a surveillance balloon over the United States, followed by new details about China’s surveillance operation.
People walk past a security camera in Melbourne on February 9, 2023. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
The Washington Post reported that the Chinese military launched the surveillance balloons from Hainan Island province off the country’s southeast coast, operating on regional neighbors, including Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and India. as well as on the United States in the past.
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The US Department of Defense noted that it has found surveillance balloons over nations on five different continents in violation of their sovereignty.
Surveillance cameras are installed at the office building of Dahua Technologies in Hangzhou, China’s Zhejiang province, on May 29, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
“This just goes to show why [China] continues to remain our pace challenge. And I think they have a lot of explanations to give when it comes to conducting these kinds of programs and violating the airspace and the sovereignty of nations,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.
Ryder went on to say that the scale of China’s program “calls into question why China, the PRC, believes it is okay to violate nations’ sovereign airspace in an inappropriate and unacceptable way.”
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Britain also banned equipment made by those same companies from government buildings in November.
Anders Hagstrom of Fox News Digital and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
