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AI security cameras with facial recognition technology at the 14th China International Exhibition on Public Safety and Security in Beijing. Photo: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images
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Privacy in China: the growth of facial recognition technology in the private sector raises concerns about security and identity

  • Authorities in China use surveillance cameras with facial recognition to record and identify people in crowds and on streets. Private firms use it too
  • Property agents are among the businesses using the technology to identify clients, and with no real privacy protection, many people worry about identity theft
Artificial intelligence
Phoebe Zhang
Phoebe Zhang
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Facial recognition technology is commonly used in countries including China in CCTV cameras, which can leverage artificial intelligence to filter through millions of profiles to identify a person. One of the most famous examples of this was when a camera pinpointed a man wanted for financial crimes in a crowd of 50,000 people at a pop concert in China.
Use of the technology is creeping into the private sector in China – used to monitor travellers at airports and for sealing mobile phone contracts, for example. In another instance, Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis News recently found that many property companies have installed facial recognition systems to categorise their clients.

Yuan Yu, an property agent, told the paper agencies need to distinguish between clients who were attracted by an advertisement and those introduced by an agent, since agents are paid a finder’s fee for bringing in customers.

Another agent told the newspaper that some clients would try to get discounts from a real estate company and its agents, and facial recognition was used to log the recipients of discounts.

A recent example of facial recognition technology happened when a camera pinpointed a man wanted for financial crimes (above) in a crowd of 50,000 people at a pop concert in China. Photo: 163.com

 

“Almost all real estate companies have facial recognition systems,” she said. “If there wasn’t facial recognition, there would be a lot of grey areas in our work.”

A man in China was recently seen wearing a motorcycle helmet to view a property exhibition. He wanted to avoid detection by facial recognition surveillance cameras. A video of him at the show, posted by an property agent in Jinan, a city in Shandong province in the east of the country, went viral. It is not known if the exhibition was held in Jinan or elsewhere.

China embraces facial recognition even as data leaks are rampant

The Southern Metropolis News released the results of a survey that found 60 per cent of respondents thought facial recognition made their cities safer. However, more than 80 per cent wished they could find and delete their data captured by the technology.

Online, people in China have called for more regulation of companies’ use of facial recognition.

“There should be high compensation [for] invading personal privacy, then this issue would be cured once and for all,” one wrote on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

A man wore a helmet to avoid facial recognition cameras at an property agent in China. Photo: Douyin

“There’s no strict law to bind [privacy protection], do you expect the companies to be bound by morals?” another wrote.

Last month, Chinese authorities issued a draft of a Personal Information Protection Law. It includes a framework for processing sensitive information, collecting images, and saving location data, and clarifies the duties of data processing companies.

There have been examples of people using official channels to push back against the growing prevalence of facial recognition technology.

A teacher uses facial recognition technology to check the identification of a student before a simulated college entrance exam in Handan in China's northern Hebei province. Photo: STR/AFP via Getty Image)

In March, Lao Dongyan, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, vehemently opposed a plan by her residential complex to install facial recognition cameras, citing data security concerns.

The complex allowed residents to opt out of the programme, but installed the cameras anyway.

In November last year, Guo Bing, an associate law professor at Zhejiang Sci-tech University, sued the Hangzhou Safari Park after it installed facial recognition technology at its entrance, claiming that the technology could “steal his identity”. This month a local court ordered the park to delete his facial recognition data and pay Guo compensation.

Private companies making facial recognition software continue to develop and advertise products explicitly for use in the property industry.

In Foshan, southern China, Damai Information Technology Company boasted that its facial recognition technology at a real estate company is 97.77 per cent accurate at recognising people with their face masks on amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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