Report on Supply Chain Compliance 3, no. 10 (May 14, 2020)
A Reuters report[1] uncovered that Amazon.com Inc. purchased cameras to take temperatures of workers from China’s Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co. Ltd., a company blacklisted[2] by the U.S. government for allegedly monitoring and detaining Chinese minorities.
The cameras Dahua sells are useful tools for measuring an employee’s temperature. The technology can also scan and log faces and is able to pick faces out of a crowd. For companies with large workforces, having such a tool on hand during the pandemic is invaluable. Several companies have done business with Dahua, including IBM, Chrysler and Honeywell.
Private corporations are legally allowed to do business with listed entities.[3] Contracts involving the U.S. government, however, are prohibited.
1 Krystal Hu and Jeffrey Dastin, “Exclusive: Amazon turns to Chinese firm on U.S. blacklist to meet thermal camera needs,” Reuters, April 29, 2020, https://reut.rs/3aS9Exe.
2 Addition of Certain Entities to the Entity List, 84 Fed. Reg. 54002, 54003 (Oct. 9, 2019) , http://bit.ly/35J7O0d.
3 “FAQs - Can a U.S. company have any dealings with a listed entity?” U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, last accessed May 7, 2020, https://bit.ly/3frz0VU.
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