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Biometric verification will eliminate the need to remember a password or security dongle, say the creators.
Singapore:
Singapore will become the first country in the world to use facial verification in its national identification scheme, but privacy advocates are alarmed by what they say is an intrusive system vulnerable to abuse.
Starting next year, millions of people living in the city-state will be able to access government agencies, banking services, and other amenities with a quick facial scan.
This biometric verification will eliminate the need to remember a password or security dongle when performing many everyday tasks, its creators say.
It’s part of the financial center’s drive to take advantage of technology, from increasing the use of electronic payments to research on driverless transportation.
“We want to be innovative in applying technology to the benefit of our citizens and businesses,” Kwok Quek Sin, who works on digital identification at Singapore’s GovTech technology agency, told AFP.
Face verification has already been adopted in various forms around the world, with Apple and Google rolling out the technology for tasks like unlocking phones and making payments.
Governments have also deployed it at airports for traveler security checks.
But the Singapore launch is one of the most ambitious yet and the first to attach facial verification to a national identification database.
The technology captures a series of photos of a person’s face in different lights.
These images are compared with other data that is already available to the government, such as national identity cards, passports, and employment passes.
Safeguards ensure the process is secure, said Lee Sea Lin of digital consultancy Toppan Ecquaria, which is working with GovTech to implement the technology.
“We want to be sure that the person behind the device is a real person … and that it is not an image or a video,” Lee said.
The technology is being integrated into the country’s digital identity scheme and is now being tested in some government offices, including the city’s tax authority and pension fund.
Private companies can subscribe to the initiative, and Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, is part of the test.
– Surveillance problems –
Facial scanning technology remains controversial despite its increasing use, and critics have raised ethical concerns about it in some countries – for example, law enforcement agencies scan crowds at large events to look for troublemakers.
Singaporean authorities are frequently accused of targeting critics of the government and taking a hard line against dissent, and activists are concerned about how face-scanning technology will be used.
“There are no clear and explicit restrictions on the power of the government when it comes to things like surveillance and data collection,” said Kirsten Han, a freelance journalist from the city.
“Will we ever find out that this data is in the hands of the police or in the hands of some other agency that we did not specifically consent to?”
Those behind the Singapore scheme emphasize that facial verification is different from recognition in that it requires user consent, but privacy advocates remain skeptical.
“The technology is still far from benign,” Privacy International research chief Tom Fisher told AFP.
He said systems like the one planned for Singapore left “exploitative opportunities,” such as using data to track and profile people.
GovTech’s Kwok insisted that no data would be shared with third parties and that users would be left with other options, such as personal passwords, to access services.
“It is not surveillance,” he said. “The use is very specific.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
