If your project touches federal money — a federal agency, a state or local body spending federal grant dollars, a school district, a contractor on a federal site — the brand of camera on the wall is not just a budget question. It is a compliance question, and getting it wrong can put funding at risk.
What Section 889 actually says
Section 889 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act prohibits federal agencies, and many recipients of federal funds and grants, from procuring or using video surveillance and telecommunications equipment from a specific list of manufacturers. For cameras, the two names that matter most are Hikvision and Dahua, along with anything that resells their hardware under a different label — which is a longer list than most people expect, because both companies supply the internals for many other brands.
In 2022 the FCC went a step further and revoked equipment authorizations for new Hikvision and Dahua video surveillance gear sold into the United States, on national-security grounds. The practical effect is that this equipment is increasingly difficult to buy new and legally deploy in any setting with a federal nexus.
Who this applies to — and who it does not
Restricted
- Federal agencies and their facilities
- State and local government using federal grant funds
- Public school districts and many universities
- Contractors and integrators working on federal sites
- Critical-infrastructure operators under federal conditions
For these buyers, Hikvision and Dahua are effectively off the table. We will not quote them into a project we know carries a federal funding condition.
Generally unaffected
- Private commercial businesses with no federal funding
- Retail, hospitality, manufacturing and property owners
- Projects paid for entirely with private money
For these buyers the restriction does not automatically apply, and value-line equipment can be a legitimate choice. We will still tell you what you are buying and where it stands, so the decision is yours and it is informed.
One caution worth stating plainly: funding sources change. A private building that later takes a federal grant, or a business that wins federal work, can inherit the restriction after the cameras are already installed. Where that is a realistic possibility, we say so before anything is purchased.
The NDAA-compliant lines we install
The good news for restricted buyers is that the compliant options are excellent, and in several cases better than the equipment being replaced. The manufacturers we install and support that carry NDAA compliance across their current camera lines include:
We are an authorized dealer for the lines we fit, which for public-sector work matters twice over: it is the difference between genuine compliant equipment with a manufacturer support path and grey-market hardware whose provenance you cannot document when an auditor asks.
Replacing restricted equipment
If you already have Hikvision or Dahua cameras and have since taken on federal funding, you are not necessarily starting from scratch. A rip-and-replace of the cameras is usually required, but the cabling, mounting and much of the network infrastructure often carry over, which contains the cost. We survey what you have, identify what has to go, and phase the replacement around your operation rather than shutting it down.
We also document the change — what was removed, what replaced it, and the compliance status of the new equipment — because for a funded project the paperwork proving compliance matters as much as the compliance itself.
Talk to us before you buy
The most expensive version of this problem is the one discovered after installation. If there is any chance your project touches federal money — now or later — a short conversation before equipment is chosen is worth far more than a compliant camera bought after a non-compliant one has already been paid for. We cover North and South Carolina from Charlotte and Columbia, and we would rather tell you the awkward thing early than the expensive thing late.