{"id":1859,"date":"2020-12-18T14:11:54","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T14:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1332493"},"modified":"2020-12-18T14:11:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T14:11:54","slug":"alibaba-offered-clients-uighur-detection-as-a-service-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=1859","title":{"rendered":"Alibaba offered clients \u2018Uighur-detection-as-a-service,\u2019 study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img-cdn.tnwcdn.com\/image\/neural?filter_last=1&amp;fit=1280%2C640&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn0.tnwcdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2020%2F12%2FUntitled-design-2020-12-18T105447.997.png&amp;signature=58b70973b4ab56876d72adca8a1142ca\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>Ten days after reports emerged that&nbsp;<span>China\u2018s biggest tech firm has<\/span>&nbsp;<span>tested an AI \u201cUighur alarm,\u201d<\/span>&nbsp;the country\u2019s largest e-commerce company has been exposed for offering face-scanning software that identifies members of the persecuted group.<\/p>\n<p>Internet giant Alibaba provided&nbsp;\u201cUighur-detection-as-a-service\u201d<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>that could send customers an alert when a Uighur person was identified, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/ipvm.com\/reports\/alibaba-uyghur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">a report<\/a> by video surveillance researchers IPVM.<\/p>\n<p>IPVM is the same organization that revealed Huawei had validated software that recognized Uighurs, after discovering an internal report on the company\u2019s own European website.<\/p>\n<p>Alibaba had also made little apparent effort to hide its system. IPVM said the firm had published details about the tech on the website of its cloud computing division.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Read:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/neural\/2020\/12\/11\/famed-footballer-cuts-ties-with-huawei-over-ai-uighur-alert\/\">Famed footballer cuts ties with Huawei over AI \u2018Uighur alert\u2019<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>According to the researchers, the Alibaba Cloud site showed how customers could use the software to identify Uighurs from images and videos.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/D5xvK1VqjkM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen>[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>IPVM said that mentions of Uighurs and minority detection were quickly deleted from the site after Alibaba was contacted for comment. The \u201cAmazon of China\u201d&nbsp;later issued <a href=\"https:\/\/ipvm.com\/reports\/alibaba-uyghur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">a statement<\/a> claiming the tech&nbsp;was only used \u201cwithin a testing environment:\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"9\">\n<p><span>We are dismayed to learn that Alibaba Cloud developed a facial recognition technology in a testing environment that included ethnicity as an algorithm attribute for tagging video imagery. We never intended our technology to be used for and will not permit it to be used for targeting specific ethnic groups, and we have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering. This trial technology was not deployed by any customer. We do not and will not permit our technology to be used to target or identify specific ethnic groups.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\" readability=\"9.7662337662338\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The company&#8217;s documentation of the feature, across several pages of its website, had given no indication that it was a test. By all appearances, it was live. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iSGx9niZrF\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/iSGx9niZrF<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Raymond Zhong (@zhonggg) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/zhonggg\/status\/1339377737560018944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">December 17, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>References to the system may have now been deleted, but IPVM has published <a href=\"https:\/\/ipvm.com\/reports\/alibaba-uyghur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">translated screenshots<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20201210101209\/https:\/\/help.aliyun.com\/document_detail\/92009.html?spm=a2c4g.11174283.6.683.1d977487wl8PvU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">archives<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20201210101223\/https:\/\/help.aliyun.com\/document_detail\/92007.html?spm=a2c4g.11186623.6.644.75f65d92rf5Nhb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">the pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While fears around the role of Chinese tech firms in the repression&nbsp;of&nbsp;Uighurs have thus far centered on Huawei, the report suggests the surveillance runs far deeper than just one company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-post-pubDate\"> Published December 18, 2020 \u2014 14:11 UTC <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/neural\/2020\/12\/18\/alibaba-offered-clients-uighur-detection-as-a-service-study-finds\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ten days after reports emerged that&nbsp;China\u2018s biggest tech firm has&nbsp;tested an AI \u201cUighur alarm,\u201d&nbsp;the country\u2019s largest e-commerce company has been exposed for offering face-scanning software that identifies members of the persecuted group&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}