The Serbian government seeks Griffeye technology to support a Huawei smart city project that would see 1,000 smart cameras in 800 locations, according to the publication.
That said, the project has stalled due to regulatory and privacy issues, and again Serbia is at an East-West crossroads. Huawei has faced sharp criticism from the United States over potential backdoor technological routes for China. At the same time US and Western surveillance companies have been vying for local contracts even as Serbian police have upped the ante with regard to enforcement of all types of crime.
And nothing is simple, with Biometric Updates stating that while German Maltego software has been a favorite for Serbian police—with Maltego being supported by the local American Chamber of Commerce—Maltego also reportedly had previously planned to work with Russian Social Links. That said, this last partnership appears to have been scuppered by the war in Ukraine.
Photo credit: Pete Woodhead, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
