House passes bill to ban gov't use of Chinese surveillance equipment

The U.S. House of Representatives on May 24 passed H.R. 5515, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, which includes an amendment prohibiting the federal government from purchasing video surveillance equipment from several China-based manufacturers, including Hikvision and Dahua. The bill still needs to make it through the Senate before being signed into law by the president.

In response to this legislative action, Jeffrey He, president, Hikvision USA Inc. and Hikvision Canada Inc., told Hikvision channel partners in an emailed letter, “We are actively working to assure our North American stakeholders that Hikvision strictly abides by the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates. We also reaffirm the fact that we hold our products to the industry's global cybersecurity standards, including North America.”

He continued, “As we continue to monitor and further deploy the necessary resources to address this matter over the coming weeks and months, please know that we will vigorously defend Hikvision from dangerous and unproven accusations about the cybersecurity of our products and solutions.”

Dahua issued an official response to the proposed legislation, saying, “Dahua Technology is a commercial enterprise with high level of business integrity. As an international company, Dahua Technology complies with all related laws and regulations in the countries where it does business.”

As this bill heads to the Senate for any revisions and ultimately to the president for signature, it will be interesting to see if specific references to Hikvision and Dahua will be included in the final bill.

SSN continues to report on this story.