BUCHEON, South Korea (LifeSiteNews) — The 800,000 South Koreans living in the sprawling city of Bucheon near the nation’s capital of Seoul could be subject to a new form of invasive high-tech contact tracing for COVID-19, thanks to a pilot program set to be launched in January.
Using over 10,000 surveillance cameras, government officials plan to try out facial recognition technology to spy on people who have tested positive for the virus in order to track their movements and close contacts and make sure they wear masks.
South Korea will soon roll out a pilot project to use artificial intelligence, facial recognition and thousands of CCTV cameras to track the movement of people infected with the coronavirus, despite concerns about the invasion of privacy https://t.co/Q5YoDnyoF4
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 13, 2021
The New York Times reported Monday that “[t]he details of the system being tested in South Korea were outlined in a proposal by the city of Bucheon that was approved in February by the federal Ministry of Science and Information and Communications Technology.”
The massive surveillance scheme will supplement what Reuters has called “an aggressive, high-tech contact tracing system” already in place in South Korea, which “harvests credit card records, cellphone location data, and CCTV footage, among other personal information.”
In this facial recognition scheme, officials will use an expansive catalogue of personal photographs to identify residents and attempt to tweak technological programming to overcome the difficulty of correctly identifying people whose faces are partially covered by masks.
The existence and use of a broad government-accessible database of personal photographs has raised obvious privacy concerns.
Bucheon officials said in a proposal that individuals must consent to submitting their photos and information before the data can be used. However, Reuters reported that, according to one official, “even if they don’t consent, the system can still track them using their silhouette and clothes.”
Meanwhile, it’s unclear what incentives or pressure officials will employ to encourage consent to use full facial recognition software.
“The subject of facial recognition software is particularly controversial, especially when it comes to matters of privacy,” the Daily Wire observed, noting that in November even Big Tech giant Facebook announced it was shuttering its facial recognition system due to “societal concerns.”
The Daily Wire also noted that “South Korea isn’t the first country to use facial recognition technology as part of their COVID response;” Russia implemented a similar scheme to enforce quarantine rules as early as February 2020, weeks before quarantines and lockdowns hit the U.S.
The mayor of Moscow explained that “[c]ompliance with the regime is constantly monitored, including with the help of facial recognition systems and other technical measures.”
South Korea and Russia’s controversial use of high-tech surveillance systems to track people, ostensibly to slow the spread of COVID-19, has been decried as a descent into 1984-like totalitarianism. An opposition party lawmaker in South Korea told Reuters the scheme is “absolutely wrong.”
“The government’s plan to become a Big Brother on the pretext of COVID is a neo-totalitarian idea,” said Park Dae-chul, a legislator in the People Power Party.
“It is absolutely wrong to monitor and control the public via CCTV using taxpayers’ money and without the consent from the public.”