After an investigation revealed alleged violations against workers at the Chinese company BYD’s factory in Bahia, northeastern Brazil, the company installed cameras in the administration and the construction areas and put up posters prohibiting photographs in these spaces.
According to the research, a computer program that creates a digital watermark with each employee’s name was also installed to identify from which machine information was shared externally.
BYD sent an email on December 18, 2024, informing employees of the changes.
In the message, the company explained that the installation was implemented by the ”Department of Information Technology of China,” and that ”this watermark registers the name of the user logged into the device, device name, and the current date,” adding that ”this measure aims to prevent possible information leaks.”
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All these changes began to be implemented shortly [after the investigation] revealed [that Chinese] workers […] were being subjected to poor working conditions and living in dirty, crowded, and poorly lit accommodations.
According to information gathered […] Brazilian workers were not affected. The Brazilians explained that Chinese workers have great difficulty filing any complaints since they do not understand Portuguese, just as the Brazilians cannot speak in Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other languages spoken by the Chinese workers.
Based on personal accounts, images, and videos, the story published […] showed that many Chinese employees were working without personal protective equipment, subjected to shifts of 12 hours per day, and suffering physical violence if they did not follow orders or meet deadlines.
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In the note, BYD did not explain why it only began to adopt such ”industrial protection measures” [installed by Department of Information Technology of China] shortly after the complaints about mistreatment of Chinese workers, given that the company began operating in Bahia in March 2024.
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BYD’s measures to monitor employees in an attempt to prevent further leaks of possible wrongdoing stands in direct contrast to the company’s public messaging since the allegations of labour comparable to slavery were made public.
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One interesting bit here is that the surveillance tool was implemented not even by BYD (which would be bad enough) but by the Chinese state if I got that right.