Anons apologies for the source, but this actually looks like they have someone who DOES actual journalism on their staff

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/us-money-funding-facial-recognition-sensetime-megvii

Something i found interesting in the article:

Also among the diverse group of institutions helping to finance China’s surveillance state:

the Alaska Retirement Management Board, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Rockefeller Foundation

all of which are “limited partners” in private equity funds that invested in SenseTime or Megvii. And even as congressional leaders, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have championed a bill to condemn human rights abuses in Xinjiang, their own states’ public employee pension funds are invested in companies building out the Chinese government’s system for tracking Uighurs.

“The story here is why private equity firms and venture capitalists are aiding the government of China, which has a history of surveilling and curtailing behavior deemed inappropriate to the goals of the Communist Party,” said one US-based technology investor, who declined to be named for fear of ruining business relationships. Being a limited partner is “not an excuse” for ignorance, he added, noting that any organization deploying millions of dollars should bear some of that responsibility.

They claim that they did not make the technology to single out demographics, yet that is what the chinese government is using it for. So why are these US institutions funding a racially motivated system which can be used to identify and target specific racial groups and have them be punished under chinese “social” credit systems?

Imagine if this was used in the US.

>>6636072

One Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who also requested anonymity for fear of jeopardizing business relationships, told BuzzFeed News human rights issues like those in Xinjiang may not be a consideration for institutional investors in private equity funds.

“As long as [limited partners] are making money, no one will care about human rights violations,” he said. “Do you think CalPERS cares as long as they’re making money?”

CalPERS or the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the US’s largest public pension fund with more than $350 billion in assets, declined to comment for this story.

>This shit is just evil justified by greed

>>6636089

Maya Wang, a senior research fellow at Human Rights Watch, said that the Communist Party’s implementation of facial recognition will allow it to

“control reality in ways that would make it capable to rule forever.”

And unlike in some Western countries, where concerned citizens and privacy advocates have expressed worries about the deployment of government facial recognition tools, Wang said, those debates don’t happen in China, where authorities place what they see as safety and social stability above all else.

>>6636107

HOLY CRAP

the list of US organizations funding this just keeps growing

Having first invested in Megvii in 2014, Qiming continued to back the company in later rounds through its Qiming Venture Partners V fund, boosting its ownership stake. High-profile backers of that fund, according to PitchBook and the firm’s own press releases, include the Mayo Clinic, the family foundation of Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which bills itself as the US’s “largest public health philanthropy.” All three organizations did not respond to a request for comment.

For example, the endowments of Princeton, Duke University, and MIT committed money to Qiming Venture Partners, a China-based venture capital firm, which was part of a $100 million round of investment in Megvii in late 2016. MIT did not respond to requests for comment and a Duke spokesperson declined to comment.

Qualcomm also maintains a business relationship with Megvii, and lists the company as an official artificial intelligence software provider on its corporate website. A representative for Qualcomm did not return multiple requests for comment. Nvidia declined to comment.

New Jersey–based security camera manufacturer Infinova has been a surveillance tech provider in Xinjiang since at least 2015. A trade publication, IPVM, first reported on Infinova’s work in the region. Current and former Infinova employees confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the company has used SenseTime software for surveillance systems in smart cities across China, including in Xinjiang. Infinova is listed as a smart city partner in SenseTime company marketing materials.

Fred Zhang, a former Infinova business manager, told BuzzFeed News that SenseTime’s facial recognition technology was an integral part of a smart city project in Shanghai that installed 3,000 cameras in building entrances. The government project had, in part, built a database of the faces of residents to detect if strangers entered, he said.