As many are aware, the U.S. Department of Commerce recently added Tiandy to their Entity List, effectively blacklisting them and restricting any U.S. firm from exporting components to Tiandy. These sanctions are one step closer to full inclusion on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ban, where Dahua and Hikvision have found themselves, banned from importing product to the U.S. Our government is accusing Tiandy of selling products to Iran and also providing surveillance equipment to the Chinese government intended to identify and oppress the Uyghur minority population in the northwest region of Xinjiang, China.
Recently, we have been in extensive, direct contact with Tiandy management. Tiandy denies both accusations vehemently. Tiandy admits their cameras are installed in Xinjiang and likely Iran. Yet, they are adamant about having no control where their product is ultimately installed after selling to approved nations like India, the UK, Qatar, etc. Essentially, they state that their distributorship created this problem. We believe Tiandy. However, we are removing Tiandy products from our website and sales channels and have asked Tiandy to temporarily pause future shipments until the U.S. government allows Tiandy a proper and thorough defense of these accusations.
It is still entirely legal to sell and install Tiandy products, with the exception of federal institutions and facilities. We are still stocked with Tiandy and are optimistic that the facts of the matter will allow Tiandy full access to ALL government agencies in the future.
We’ll briefly explain why we chose Tiandy in the first place. Tiandy is well known for their extreme quality and utilization of the most power semiconductors available. Unlike the dominant suppliers to the US security market that are utilizing banned Huawei/Hisilicon processors, Tiandy focused on Western engineered technology, including Intel. Tiandy was even a recipient of Intel’s Strategic Partner Award in 2018 and Application Innovation Award in 2019.
The industry’s leading ratings forum evaluated Tiandy extensively and rated Tiandy as superior to all other Chinese manufactured cameras. From our own testing, we agreed with that evaluation. Also impressive was their failure rates: less than 1 per 1000 units installed. Tiandy was more expensive than some, but we believe it was worth it in the long term. Another consideration was the Heathrow Airport in London. The UK has always been the world leader in surveillance and they chose Tiandy as well. Without the ability to fly to China like we usually do to meet new vendors we considered our vetting of Tiandy proper and thorough.
Gen IV Technology always has and always will hold our suppliers accountable and be honest & transparent to our customers. We protect our customers; we protect our country. The founders are USAF Veterans and committed many years of their life to the US Military. We love our country.
The real problem in the US surveillance market is that the truth is not being told or advertised. Case in point, Hikvision and Dahua, two of the largest Chinese suppliers of CCTV equipment were NDAA banned for several reasons, too many to list here but a simple google search will enlighten you. What happened once they were banned? Hundreds of US distributors and installers simply OEM’d those banned brands, removing the banned brand name from the cameras and recorders and replacing it with a brand name that wasn’t banned. These products were still Hikvision and Dahua. Nearly EVERY business or end user who bought these units were unaware of this truth.
How serious is the continued sales and marketing of Dahua or Hikvision as a concealed brand? Please read this Department of Justice indictment on a well-known distributor in New York. He was also charged with lying about the country of origin
Inadvertently installing a banned product into a military base or federal agency is no defense. You can go to prison and you can lose everything you worked a lifetime for. Ignorance of the law is no defense.
We once sold Hikvision. We once sold Dahua. When the world experienced the largest DDOS attack on record because of Dahua Specific IOT devices, we issued an immediate stop ship and ended our relationship with Dahua. We lost 80% of our sales revenue. It was very painful. Our competition? They continued to ship Dahua cloaked product, knowing within 5 minutes of connecting their cameras to the Internet, that the Mirai Botnet would take control of the customer’s network.
We didn’t become infuriated with Dahua because some hacker utilized Dahua products as attack vectors, we ended the relationship because Dahua embedded several backdoor master/admin passwords within their code allowing ANYONE possessing this secret password full backdoor access to view American cameras from anywhere in the world. Most opine, the Chinese Communist Party watching our military bases, defense contractors, power plants and other critical infrastructure. Commercial impact? Let’s imagine you own a jewelry store with millions of dollars in precious jewels. These backdoor passwords and your business network information is sold on the Dark Web (yes, this really happens). The employees go home and the thieves watch the owner type in his alarm code remotely and you’re hit. No breaking or entering, simple disabling of the surveillance. Easy money.
Even worse is that these devices are used to shut down critical infrastructure and facilities that are essential to our national security. It isn’t always about what the user can see, but rather what the user can access and what they can do with it. The Mirai Botnet cost the world over a billion dollars because IP Cameras shut down a major internet service.
To help our customers avoid sellers marketing rebranded government-banned products, we will be releasing a comprehensive US import database report from the US government. You may be surprised by some of these findings. Costco, the massive multi-billion dollar global retailer, sold Lorex branded CCTV equipment to consumers. Lorex is fully owned by Dahua and hundreds of thousands of Lorex (Dahua) products were and still are being sold in the US.
This all can be avoided. Do your due diligence. Demand your supplier admit exactly who’s product they are really selling. What do they have to hide? As for us, you can rest assured we’ve got you covered. We always have and always will put our customers’ protection before our own personal profit. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us and we will be glad to provide any further information.
Thank you for your time.