National and Act want audit of communist security cameras on ‘sensitive’ buildings

Intelligence Agencies Minister Andrew Little says he is unlikely to do an audit of Government buildings that have controversial Chinese security cameras installed, despite many like-minded countries like Australia and the UK dumping the cameras from public infrastructure.

Little said a full audit would be “unlikely - because there could be any number of cameras”.

“The question is… whether it’s networked, whether it’s connected to the internet,” Little said.

“We have protective security requirements - departments know that. It’ll be for them to ascertain whether they think there is any undue risk,” Little said.

Little said the matter of an audit of the number of cameras and where they were installed was one of priorities.

“When I think about the national security risks that we face such as terrorism, such as foreign influence, and foreign interference, and cybersecurity risks I tell you, they are way more important to me than who might have a camera that we don’t know whether it’s networked or not,” LIttle said.

National and Act have called for an audit of the number of public buildings with the cameras installed, after a Newstalk ZB investigation found at least 120 Hikvision or Dahua cameras are installed across the New Zealand Police, Department of Conservation, Ministry of Social Development and Oranga Tamariki.

“Well, you really want to do a good audit, understand where they are, how they’re connected,” National leader Christopher Luxon said. “Then you want to do a risk assessment as to does that expose us to any vulnerabilities - and then we’d look to replace them.”

Act leader David Seymour agreed an audit would be a good idea.

“I think it is worrying that hardware can have the ability to store what people are doing and can actually be used to transmit information you wouldn’t want transmitted,” Seymour said.

“An audit would be a smart thing to do,” he said.

Manufacturers Dahua and Hikvision are partly state-owned by the Chinese Communist Party, the Associated Press has reported. Hikvision has also faced allegations of aiding Beijing in oppressing minorities and monitoring protesters, which it has denied.

In February, Australia’s Government said it will remove the surveillance cameras from sensitive buildings, including from several defence and military-associated spaces, after the United States and Britain made similar moves last year.