Top Group and iFlytek: Can DanTehan and his University Foreign Interference Taskforce provide any assurance that Top Group students are not being surveilled, and that they will not be victimised like UQ's Drew Pavlou?

by Ganesh Sahathevan


It has been previously reported on this blog that Zhu Minshen and his Top Group entered into a commercial arrangement with iFlytek, a company that has been blacklisted by the US Government, given its part in the persecution of Uyghurs.  It was also reported that iFlytek technicians have been at Top Group's premises in Sydney, to install equipment. 

In a report published in 2017 Human Rights Watch said: 

iFlytek has a joint laboratory with the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University. The department has a long history of developing speech and speaker recognition for automated telephone surveillance, and is a major player in the Golden Shield Project, the Ministry of Public Security’s ambitious plan to bolster and broaden surveillance using technology.

iFlytek also has a range of commercial text-to-speech and speech recognition applications for mobile phones, including a voice assistance app for Android phones in China. The company states it has 890 million users, which would provide a large speech data set that can be used to train and improve its speech recognition software for a range of purposes, potentially including surveillance.

It is unclear to what extent iFlytek shares the personal information it collects for commercial purposes with the Ministry of Public Security. While iFlytek promises confidentiality in its customer privacy statement, it also says that it may disclose personal information “according to the demands of the relevant government departments.” China’s Cybersecurity Law requires companies to provide undefined “technical support” to security agencies to aid in investigations, and provides no privacy protections against state surveillance. iFlytek is not required to inform users of government information requests, for example.

The Australian Minister for Education Dan Tehan has announced that his University Foreign Interference Taskforce. 

The case of UQ student Drew Pavlou has shown that China can and has surveilled local students.Against that backdrop, it is curious that neither Minister Tehan nor his Taskforce have indicated any action with regards iFlytek and Top Education.
Their seeming lack of interest is surprising given that Huawei  has joined forces "with iFlytek for consumer voice recognition".

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TO BE READ WITH 

iFlytek techies conducted "site work" at Zhu Minshen's Top Edu premises in Sydney in 20190: Are other tertiary institutions in Australia exposed to iFlytek technology, will the Law Council Aus protest on behalf of the Uighurs, have the NSW LPAB and TEQSA informed Dan Tehan