China issues regulations limiting use of facial recognition technology after relying on it for years

The Chinese government, which has long depended on face recognition technology, made the decision on Tuesday to publish new regulations that would limit its usage. According to a story from The Wall Street Journal, this has restricted the use of the technology for purportedly relevant purposes to national security.

The technique will only be used in situations when it has a clear purpose and is deemed to be adequately required, according to the Cybersecurity Administration of China, which oversees internet usage in the nation.

It is currently forbidden to utilize technology to determine someone’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, or state of health. It may only be used with the subject’s agreement or when strictly necessary to protect national security.

The Wall Street Journal said that these new regulations make China’s regulations on personal and professional uses of face recognition seem fairly comparable to those in the West. However, there are limited exceptions for applications of the technology that are connected to national security.

An analyst told the newspaper that China’s approach to governance is “sweet and sour,” as it tries to strike a balance between its potential to threaten people’s privacy and its current worries about the abuse of the potent technology.

China has taken steps in recent months to establish checks and balances on how Chinese tech firms utilize data and AI. It put in place regulations for deep fakes, media produced by AI, and other generative AI technologies.

For the last seven years, facial recognition technology has allowed Chinese individuals to use their faces as a form of identification at malls, offices, airports, and hotels.

People may even use this technology to confirm their identities before boarding a plane, pay for things in certain establishments, and access buildings.

In many Chinese cities, surveillance cameras are a regular sight. To supply the technology for security reasons, the providers of this equipment have teamed with the local police. However, they also keep tabs on ethnic minorities, dissidents, and anybody else who the Chinese government believes to be a danger to national security.

The deployment of the technology to suppress purported opposition in the Xinjiang region of China’s northwest has drawn criticism from the international community. Uyghur and Turkic Muslim populations are being attacked and forcefully assimilated using facial recognition technology.

According to the article, police employ technology to identify and classify Uyghurs they suspect of being dissidents before sending them to detention centers to undergo political indoctrination.

China justifies its usage by saying that it is done thus to stop terrorism.

It should be mentioned that a lawsuit was also brought against the technology when a law professor in Hangzhou was refused admittance to the zoo because he refused to utilize the face recognition system to enter.

The zoo was ordered by the court to pay Guo damages and remove his data after the judge agreed with the law professor. The court did not address whether it was appropriate for the zoo to continue requiring visitors to submit to face recognition, however.

Chinese residents were worried about having their personal information exposed owing to a lack of data security, according to a 2019 poll by the think tank Nandu Personal Information Protection Research Center in China.

According to the new regulations, no permission is required for the collection or use of face data. However, this is also a key component of China’s 2017 Cybersecurity Law, which mandates the need of individual permission for the collecting of personal data.

Furthermore, as Chinese people have already emphasized to the government, face recognition should not be utilized in hotel rooms, restrooms, or toilets. Authorities have been instructed to refrain from pressuring people into using facial recognition technology to verify their identification.

According to experts who spoke with the media, the Communist Party of China (CPC) is making an effort to demonstrate to the people that it respects public discourse while being in charge of national security.