by Damjan Tutarkov
LaCorte News
Former Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer has registered as a foreign agent for Hikvision USA, a U.S.-based tech firm owned by a multi-billion-dollar Chinese video surveillance company with ties to the Chinese government.
The Chinese government reportedly holds a 42% stake in Hikvision, which produces surveillance technology for the Chinese military and government and has also provided surveillance cameras to U.S. military bases, streets, and private residences, according to a 2017 report by the Wall Street Journal.
“The fact that it’s at a U.S. military installation and was in a very sensitive U.S. embassy is stunning,” Carolyn Bartholomew, chairwoman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said in a statement to the WSJ at the time. “We shouldn’t presume that there are benign intentions in the use of information-gathering technology that is funded directly or indirectly by the Chinese government.”