“From my experience of just walking around London, it would probably be several times over that. And that is only a conservative estimate, because not all the cameras appear in Shodan scans.įor example, the research found 55,455 Hikvision networks in London. With over 600,000 Hikvision networks, the United States has the second-highest number of the company’s cameras, just after Vietnam (The research couldn’t identify most camera networks in China.) Each of these detected IP networks can support up to 24 Hikvision cameras, meaning the total numbers of cameras will be even higher.
It’s hard to know exactly how many Hikvision cameras are being used around the world, but research in 2021 by industry research group Top10VPN used the Shodan search engine (which scans the internet for the unique IP addresses used by devices, in this case cameras) to find 4.8 million networks of Hikvision devices in 191 countries outside China. Overseas sales made up 27% of its $12.42 billion in revenue in 2021. In 2010, it was the top digital video recorder provider in the world thanks to its network of surveillance cameras, which use DVRs to record the footage. It started registering its name as a trademark in over a hundred countries as early as 2004. This year, the US Treasury is reportedly considering adding Hikvision to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List, usually reserved for countries like North Korea or Iran.īut Hikvision has also been aiming to go global since the start. As a result, the US government has imposed several sanctions on it in the last three years. The firm has helped build China’s massive police surveillance system and tailored it to oppress the Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. Its ability to make decent-quality products at cheap prices (as well as its ties with the Chinese state) has helped make Hikvision the largest manufacturer of video surveillance equipment in the world.īut while Hikvision’s close links with the Chinese government have helped it grow, it is these links that may now be its undoing.
The Chinese company’s products can be found anywhere from police surveillance systems to baby monitors in more than 190 countries. You may never have heard of Hikvision, but chances are you’ve already been captured by one of its millions of cameras.
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