{"id":46060,"date":"2021-07-14T12:10:09","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T09:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=46060"},"modified":"2025-09-01T14:27:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:27:43","slug":"china-deploys-facial-recognition-technology-to-fight-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/china-deploys-facial-recognition-technology-to-fight-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"China deploys facial-recognition technology to fight COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Chinese city of Ruili, Yunnan Province, facial-recognition technology has been linked to citizens’ health codes to combat the spread of the coronavirus. This is reported by France 24<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is the first publicly registered case of using facial recognition to track movements and a person\u2019s health status when entering and leaving residential compounds, supermarkets, transport hubs, and other public places.<\/p>\n

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“Anyone entering or leaving must have their health code and face scanned,” said city officials.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to them, the region is experiencing the largest COVID-19 outbreak in months. Last week the city reported 155 new infections.<\/p>\n

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“Security tools such as facial-recognition cameras, smart door locks, and road barriers have been deployed in key areas,” local authorities said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Details on how long records will be stored in the database are absent. There is also no information on whether authorities plan to deactivate the system after the COVID-19 outbreak is contained.<\/p>\n

The new health-monitoring tools have raised privacy concerns.<\/p>\n

According to a January investigation by the New York Times<\/a>, a widely used app for tracking travel history and virus tests, developed by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, shared data with the police.<\/p>\n

During the height of the pandemic, law enforcement in major cities wore helmets equipped with facial-recognition systems and infrared cameras that measured pedestrians’ temperatures.<\/p>\n

Human rights groups criticised China’s ubiquitous surveillance network, saying it is used to suppress dissent and persecute ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n

Earlier in July, Tencent announced a facial-recognition feature<\/a> to restrict underage gamers’ access to online games at night.<\/p>\n

In June it was reported that the Chinese company Canon Information Technology installed AI cameras<\/a> that admit only smiling people into offices.<\/p>\n

In May, a programmer-engineer spoke about testing of an emotion-recognition system<\/a> in police stations in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog AI<\/a> \u2014 all the news from the world of AI!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Chinese city of Ruili, Yunnan Province, facial-recognition technology was linked to citizens’ health codes to combat the spread of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[438,133,1863,1515],"class_list":["post-46060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-china","tag-coronavirus","tag-tracking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"24","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46061,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46060\/revisions\/46061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}