The Home Office of the United Kingdom has announced that the U.K. is joining China’s FaceR2VM project, which aims to develop facial recognition technology to be able to identify people even when their face is partially hidden by a mask.
The Home Office has said that it is “one of several partners” of the project, and the Met Police agency has also confirmed its participation, saying through a spokesperson that it “is committed to using new and emerging technologies to tackle crime and stop violent criminals and has a responsibility to stay abreast of evolving technologies that could be of benefit to policing.”
The use of facial recognition technology that can identify an individual when their face is partially obscured by a mask is increasingly necessary as the world tries to cope with the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. Facial Recognition and other biometric technologies are being increasingly relied upon to identify individuals who may be carrying the virus at airports and other border checkpoints.
Critics of the decision to join the program point out China’s role in the surveillance of Muslim minorities living in the country’s northwestern Xinjiang region.
“It is a matter of concern when we find ourselves assisting what is a totalitarian state in developing surveillance technology used to police and incarcerate more than a million Muslims in Xinjiang,” said Lord Patten, Oxford University chancellor and former governor of Hong Kong. “This is exactly the sort of research collaboration over which we should be extremely careful,” he added.
The FaceR2VM — Face Matching for Automatic Identity Retrieval, Recognition, Verification and Management — program began in 2016 and is set to conclude in 2021.
March 18, 2020 – by Tony Bitzionis