South Korea to test facial recognition to detect corona infections
South Korea is going to start a pilot in the city of Bucheon. In it, it wants to use facial recognition, artificial intelligence and images from security cameras to “follow the movements of people infected with the coronavirus”. Reuters reports that.
Despite privacy concerns, the pilot will become operational in January in Bucheon, a city with more than 850,000 inhabitants, near the capital Seoul, according to Reuters news agency. A system with AI algorithms and facial recognition will be deployed, which will analyze the images from ‘more than 10,820 security cameras’ to track the movements of people with the corona virus. The South Korean Ministry of ICT has said there are currently no plans to expand the pilot to a national project, according to Reuters.
The system is intended to map out exactly who infected people have been in contact with. The system can also recognize whether the person was wearing a face mask. That’s according to a 110-page business plan provided to Reuters by an official who is critical of the project. The city also says that the system should assist source and contact investigations and the ‘overloaded investigation teams’ in Bucheon.
In South Korea, contact tracing is already using a system that collects images from security cameras, location data from smartphones and credit card information. However, that system still relies on researchers, who often work 24-hour shifts to conduct research and contact potentially infected people, according to Reuters sources.
The mayor of Bucheon would have stated at the end of 2020 that the use of facial recognition can assist this. The system should also ensure that investigation teams are no longer completely dependent on the statements of Covid-19 patients, who “are not always honest about their activities and whereabouts”.
Criticism and Privacy Objections
Human rights organizations have criticized the use of facial recognition for source and contact investigations. For example, Amnesty International published a report last year about the use of surveillance techniques such as facial recognition to combat the corona virus and the dangers of such surveillance.
Reuters writes that there is also criticism in South Korea of the planned pilot. For example, some South Korean policymakers have expressed concerns about the possibility that the government will “keep and use data well beyond the needs of the pandemic.” An employee of the main South Korean opposition party told Reuters: “It is absolutely wrong to monitor and control the people through cameras with taxpayers’ money and without the consent of the population.”
An official from Bucheon then claims to Reuters that there are “no privacy concerns”. The system is legal according to him or her. This official also reports that the faces of people who are not part of a contact investigation are made unrecognizable by the system. “There is no privacy issue here as the system tracks the confirmed patient under the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act,” the official told Reuters. “Contact investigators adhere to that law, so there is no risk of data spillage or privacy violation.”
Patients must also consent to the use of facial recognition, but even if they do not consent, the system can still track them based on their silhouette and clothing, the official told Reuters.