“What if the government of a country joins forces with a foreign authoritarian regime to spy on its own people?” ask Kevin Sheives, Deputy Director of the Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and Kaitlin Deering Scott from the International Republican Institute, in their joint article (“How Civil Society Can Confront the China Challenge — And Win”) recently published in the “Journal of Democracy,” which is printed by Johns Hopkins University Press for NED.
TAKE SERBIA AS AN EXAMPLE…
The authors of the mentioned article believe that the answer lies in the activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
“Take Serbia, for example. The administration of President Aleksandar Vučić attempted in 2019 to install a thousand Huawei facial recognition cameras across Belgrade, the capital. The rights to privacy and free dissent were put at great risk, and technology from the People’s Republic of China was supplying repressive tools to an illiberal regime,” wrote Sheives and Deering Scott.

“As a response, the Share Foundation — a Serbian digital rights organization with a creative touch — launched a citizen campaign to monitor each camera on the street through crowdsourcing, highlighted the risks of the program in Serbian and European media, and even popularized the hashtag #hiljadekamera. Under pressure, the government soon halted the mass surveillance camera program. Even though Serbian law enforcement and government agencies continue to push for new ways to introduce mass biometric surveillance systems, the activism of the Share Foundation achieved an impressive victory,” the article’s authors note.
WHERE DID ORWELL GO?
At first glance, a group of conscientious and aware citizens joined forces to protect Belgraders from Big Brother. Leaving aside the fact that in Serbian society, Big Brother is no longer the personification of George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel but rather a synonym for a vulgar television reality show.
Nevertheless, one group of presumably well-intentioned people in Belgrade, from an external perspective, pressured the authorities so that “smart” cameras would not monitor us on the streets and so that someone behind some Orwellian telescreen would not know exactly where we are at all times.
But, as the saying goes, the end crowns the work.
WHAT IS “SMART BALKANS”?
The action of the mentioned NGO was carried out in collaboration with the European Digital Rights Initiative, of which the Share Foundation is a member, and that is entirely fine, even though the funders of the mentioned umbrella organization include George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
Recently, the Share Foundation, this time within the “SMART Balkans” project, received 816,000 Norwegian kroner (a little over 8,000,000 dinars), together with the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, which received the same amount.
One of the goals of the Share Foundation project is to prevent “policies that encroach on the right to privacy and the protection of human rights,” similar to what happened in 2019 with the Belgrade cameras.
This agenda perfectly aligns with the views expressed in the article mentioned at the beginning of this text: a local NGO, concerned about freedoms, acts by influencing the authorities to protect human rights and the right to privacy. Is there anything more beautiful, even more poetic, in the work of the so-called civil sector? The only shadow cast over the whole thing, in part, is the structure of the “SMART Balkans” project.

A GEOPOLITICAL AGENDA EXISTS
The “SMART Balkans” project is the brainchild of the Center for Civil Society Promotion from Sarajevo. Funders: USAID, the US Embassy in Sarajevo, the EU, Norway, the Austrian Development Agency, various bodies of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finally, the Islamic Development Bank.
Then there is the Institute for Democracy and Mediation from Tirana. Funders: The Marshall Fund in Germany, the British government, Sweden, the US Embassy in Tirana, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the EU, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Transparency International, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation…
Finally, the Center for Research and Policy Making from North Macedonia. Funders: UKaid, USAID, the World Bank, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Central European Initiative, France, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, NATO…
I have not listed many agencies, organizations, and foundations that fund these three organizations involved in the “SMART Balkans” program simply due to the length of the text.
Without delving into the personal motives and intentions of the members of the Share Foundation, based on the mentioned funders of the “SMART Balkans” project, we can easily identify the existence of a certain (geo)political agenda. I doubt that NATO or the US embassies allocate money outside the scope of their geopolitical interests, and that hardly needs to be proven here.
BELGRADE “FELL FOR” THE CHINESE TRAP
Let’s return for a moment to the text by Kevin Sheives and Kaitlin Deering Scott, written for NED:
“In Serbia and elsewhere, civil society is called to confront the challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China to democratic values and practices. Even governments that do not collaborate with Beijing often respond weakly to the ambitions of the PRC, constrained by economic or geopolitical caution. Civil society groups and activists — so often targeted by the Chinese Communist Party — lack such inhibitions and may prove to be tougher opponents. When allowed to flourish and protected from the pressures of governments (both domestic and foreign), civil society can serve as a powerful, authentic, and resilient force for democracy.”
From what has been presented, one might infer that Belgrade “fell for” the Chinese trap and intended to install “smart” cameras that, using biometric data, “read” faces and track us everywhere, from Kalemegdan to Mali Mokri Lug, from Borča 2 to Lazarevac, and from Surčin to Pančevo, but a group of vigilant and conscientious people prevented this.
SOME NEW YORKERS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Unfortunately, our story does not end on Terazije but on Fifth Avenue or in Brooklyn. It would be fair, indeed, if the authors of the article mentioned at the beginning of this text had informed their readers that identical facial recognition cameras have long existed in the US as well. According to some sources, some of these cameras are also of Chinese origin, but that is not important for our story.
According to Amnesty International, about 25,500 surveillance cameras in New York City can recognize and identify faces. However, it turns out that not all New Yorkers are equal; some are more equal than others. The number of surveillance cameras in New York is highest in neighborhoods where members of “non-white” racial and ethnic groups live, such as the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
When New Yorkers marched in the “Black Lives Matter” protests in mid-2020, they risked being exposed to facial recognition, according to Amnesty International. The route of that protest march, from the West Fourth Street–Washington Square subway station to the park on the same square, was almost 100% covered by “smart” cameras operated by the NYPD. How is it that when countless cameras monitor you on the streets in New York, it is considered a democratically regulated fight against crime and terrorism, but when the same cameras are installed in Belgrade or Beijing, it is viewed as pressure from a totalitarian regime on its citizens?
Or, what if significantly more of these cameras in Serbia “covered” areas where minority communities live?
The mechanism of double standards is perhaps most finely tuned when it comes to “smart” surveillance cameras, as we are expected to take NED and others at their word when they tell us that in China and Serbia, advanced technology threatens democratic principles and civil liberties, while at the same time, that same technology in the US poses no threat to anyone and is used solely for security purposes.
NEW YORK COPS FILM ON THE GO
If you were to ask the NYPD, which has been using facial recognition technology with cameras since 2011, a full eight years before Belgrade resorted to such cameras, what those surveillance cameras are for, they would tell you that it is purely for fighting crime and terrorism and that this issue does not concern or touch on human rights. Human rights are not a concern when it comes to the facial recognition cameras that New York police officers wear while patrolling.
The NYPD website features a whole set of frequently asked questions with official answers regarding the use of facial recognition cameras. All official answers are very measured, polished, well-worded, and courteous—just enough to make the average person believe that the use of facial recognition cameras does not concern them.

These courteous answers cover more political crudeness than they can convince us that no one could even attempt to misuse New York’s surveillance cameras. Fortunately, thanks to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and other whistleblowers, we now know that the political forces represented by NED, along with other similar organizations, certainly do intrude into our homes through various forms of electronic surveillance.
Therefore, it is extremely hypocritical for NED, in the article at the beginning of this text, to praise the aforementioned Belgrade NGO so highly, no matter how honest and well-intentioned its motives may be, without inviting it or a similar organization to conduct an action in the US to remove surveillance cameras from the streets.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
We can think very creatively, even joke around, wondering why this is the case. While we do so, part of the answer to this question can be found in the article mentioned at the beginning of this text:
“…Democratic civil society activists and national security agencies may be strange bedfellows, but the mission of the former to support the rule of law and the mission of the latter to protect national sovereignty can align in the fight against foreign authoritarian influence…”
“…Civil society has a key role in raising awareness of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence among the general public through research, advocacy, and awareness campaigns that link the CCP’s global influence to local issues of importance (e.g., the environment, workers’ rights, financial sustainability, unfair economic competition), rather than geopolitical divisions…” Think about this one more time.