SARAJEVO -- Amid a growing push for transparency, Sarajevo police have chosen to use body cameras from a controversial Chinese company that is under scrutiny in Canada and the European Union and blacklisted in the United States over national security concerns.
RFE/RL reporting shows that despite those warnings -- which also include charges from the U.S. Justice Department of industrial espionage -- the Sarajevo Canton’s Interior Ministry decided to purchase 200 police body cams in 2023 from Hytera, a partially state-owned Chinese manufacturer, for a pilot program launched on July 1.
This local-level episode comes amid an evolving conversation across Europe over the use of Chinese telecommunications equipment in government programs. While the United States has been the strictest -- banning surveillance cameras and other equipment made by Chinese giants like Huawei, ZTE, Dahua, and Hikvision -- European governments like Britain, Germany, France, and the Baltic states are also updating their procurement systems amid growing probes into security risks and lax data practices on a collection of Chinese firms.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere across the Balkans, budget-conscious governments have increasingly turned to affordable Chinese equipment with little public debate about the potential security implications.
In the case of the 200,000-euro ($222,000) sale of the police body cams -- small video cameras worn by an officer to record arrests and provide evidence from crime scenes -- Sarajevo Canton Interior Minister Admir Katica has not said publicly that the equipment is made by Hytera or that the company has been blacklisted in the United States and is under mounting scrutiny.
When asked by RFE/RL if they were aware of the accusations and that Hytera has been blacklisted by the U.S. government, the Sarajevo Canton Interior Ministry said only that Bosnia's law on public procurement "does not give the possibility to exclude a certain bidder according to the criteria stated in the question."
Drazen Vidakovic, an attorney who previously worked for Bosnia's Public Procurement Agency, told RFE/RL that local procurement law does grant provisions for a supplier to be excluded over criminal proceedings, but applying this to international charges is difficult.
"An offer can be rejected due to gross professional misconduct, [and] industrial espionage could be considered part of gross professional misconduct," Vidakovic said. "But it's difficult to prove because the ruling was not made according to our laws, so we don't have any judgment of ours to cite."
A Closer Look At Hytera
Hytera Communications was founded in 1993 and is best known for its walkie-talkies, radio transceivers, radio systems, and bodycams like those bought for the Sarajevo police.
The Chinese government owns approximately 10 percent of Hytera through an investment fund, and sales and imports of its equipment were banned in the United States after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in 2021 that the firm is one of several Chinese companies that pose an "unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons."
The Chinese firm has also been embroiled in a multiyear legal fight in the United States over charges that it stole trade secrets from the U.S. telecommunications company Motorola, a leading firm on the global market for police body cams, in addition to Hytera and Axon -- another U.S. manufacturer. A U.S. jury ruled in favor of Motorola against Hytera in 2020 and awarded more than $748 million in damages.
A new criminal trial against Hytera for allegations of theft and copyright infringement from Motorola is set to begin in October.
Hytera did not respond to multiple RFE/RL requests for comment about the body-cam sale to Sarajevo Canton, the legal case with Motorola, or security risks posed by its products.
Conor Healy, the director of government research at IPVM, a surveillance-industry research firm, says the response of officials from the canton’s Interior Ministry is insufficient.
"This is a common excuse from public agencies around the world," he told RFE/RL. "The reality is that procurement regulations almost always provide some latitude to exclude suppliers on legitimate grounds.
"[Were] the police really powerless to refrain from doing business with a criminally indicted company?" Healy added. "If that is really true, then there is a problem in the procurement law."
In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the country's national police service, faced a backlash in 2022 for buying Hytera body cams and eventually suspended a contract with its local subsidiary. A later review found that the equipment did not lead to any security breaches, but the incident led to an overall change in the RCMP's procurement system.
Some EU government institutions have also begun to phase out Hytera equipment.
An RFE/RL review of procurement records for the European External Affairs Service (EEAS), the EU's diplomatic service, shows that it has begun to replace Hytera equipment in use at its headquarters in Brussels and several other offices around the world with Motorola equipment.
"The replacement of the radio equipment is based on the technical and operational assessment of the EU delegations," the EEAS said.
Sarajevo's Pilot Program
The pilot program for the cameras was first promised in 2021 when the newly elected local government for Sarajevo Canton announced that it wanted to improve the transparency and efficiency of the police force.
The equipment was acquired from a Sarajevo-based supplier called MIBO Komunikacije in November 2023 and the program launched on July 1 is a pilot program involving traffic police in the canton, marking the first units to use body cams in Bosnia.
In a statement to RFE/RL, the canton's Interior Ministry said the body cams are in a trial period to gauge both how they are received by the public and by police officers.
One issue raised by Healy with the purchase of Hytera equipment is that in addition to the cameras, part of the sale also includes software from the company for downloading footage from cameras and managing material, which could come with weak security for protecting data from the body cams.
"I think there is a lot of data that body cameras record and the security of such a database is very important," Healy said.
The ministry said its Professional Standards Unit, as well as the Internal Control Department, have access to the material recorded by the camera and are taking steps to manage it.
“The recorded material is kept on the storage system for 30 days, while during the test period of using this equipment the recording will only be kept for seven days,” the ministry said.
Healy, however, says that relying on Hytera’s software comes with risks given that similar programs from its peer companies for surveillance cameras, such as Dahua and Hikvision, have faced data breaches, had documented vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers, and have even been accused of providing access to elements of the Chinese government, a charge that the companies have denied.
“How many times have we heard companies say that they can’t access your data and then it turned out to be untrue?” Healy said. “I hope police in Sarajevo understand how sensitive the data they are recording and storing is.”
