Under watch by Chinese tech, Tibetans in Nepal suffocating
KATHMANDU, NEPAL—In Nepal, the unseen eye has changed Tibetan life.
The cameras are not just machines perched on the thick bundles of wires that twist through narrow lanes of Kathmandu in Nepal. They are a presence, an unseen watcher that Tibetans have learned to fear.
In the city’s refugee settlements, once a haven for the community, every lens is a warning.
Men draw their curtains before speaking. Prayer rooms remain locked, their devotions muted behind wood and cloth. The flags that once fluttered freely now cling in tatters to barbed wire.
Nepal is one of at least 150 countries where Chinese companies now sell surveillance tools. These systems that have become central to Beijing’s global push by offering cash-strapped governments, like the Himalayan kingdom, a cheap but intrusive form of policing that uses cameras, algorithms, and data as a force multiplier for control, an Associated Press (AP) investigation found.
In Nepal, the technology is also used to watch and deter pro-independence activities from Tibetans.
Near Nepal’s border with Tibet, the road is choked with snow, winding past villages where locals say Chinese officials have pressured them to remove photographs of the Dalai Lama.
In Lo Manthang, long a sanctuary for those trying to slip across the mountains, a towering surveillance installation on the Chinese side now overlooks the mountain paths below.
Infrared
The message is unmistakable: the Himalayas no longer offer cover.
The reality is not limited to Nepal or the Himalayas.
When you unlock a phone, step into view of a security camera or drive past a license plate reader at night, beams of infrared light—invisible to the naked eye—shine onto the unique contours of your face, your body, your license plate lettering. Those infrared beams allow cameras to pick out and recognize individual human beings.
Over the past decade, facial recognition technology has gone from science fiction fantasy to worldwide reality—nowhere more so than in China, home to more security cameras than the rest of the world combined.
At airports and train stations, passengers line up for face scans at gates and by officers.
On the streets, cameras scan pedestrians and flag vehicles breaking traffic rules.
Face scan
By law, anyone registering new SIM cards in China must show themselves to a face scanning camera, the images stored in telecom databases. And until recently, Chinese authorities required most guests to scan their faces when checking in to a hotel.
For many, such technology has offered convenience and safety, seamlessly woven into the backdrop of their lives. But for some, it’s become an intrusive form of state control.
AP investigations have found that such surveillance systems in China were to a large degree designed and built by American companies, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known. It has cemented the rule of China’s ruling Communist Party, offering it a powerful tool to control and monitor perceived threats to the state like dissidents, ethnic minorities and even its own officials.
Dozens who spoke to AP, from Tibetan activists to ordinary farmers to a former vice mayor, described being tracked and monitored by vast networks of cameras that stud the country, hampering their movements and alerting the police to their activities.
For years, such technology faced legal barriers in the country where it was first developed, the United States. But over the past five years, the US Border Patrol has vastly expanded its surveillance powers, monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, AP found.
Border trips
Under the Trump administration, billions are now being poured into a vast array of surveillance systems, including license plate readers across the US that have ensnared innocent drivers for little more than taking a quick trip to areas near the border.
In this series of photographs, an infrared filter was used on a modified camera converted to capture the full spectrum of light, including ultraviolet, visible, and infrared.
This filter, which cuts out some visible light to better reveal infrared, is red by design in order to block certain light wavelengths.
These beams are used to track vehicles and people, enable facial recognition—and ultimately, assert digital control.
