The trend for the massive introduction of face recognition systems, which is gaining momentum, for example, in China, has caused serious concerns in Western countries, in which voices are increasingly voiced in favor of banning such systems. In Russia, the situation, unfortunately, is completely different: the number of cameras in cities, at transport facilities and in general everywhere, wherever possible and impossible, is increasing all the time, and the Central Bank is trying to push through the Duma the obligatory biometric identification, without which it will soon be difficult to obtain at least some services.
As our analysis of materials from the Western press has shown, a number of socio-political initiatives are operating in Europe and the United States that collect information on the current state of affairs in the field of automatic face recognition and seek their ban at the legislative level (American Initiative "Prohibit surveillance of faces"; British the Big Brother is Watching You Initiative; the German Stop Face Recognition Initiative, etc.).
These initiatives are already bearing their first fruits. According to the BBC, the European Commission is considering the possibility of banning such systems in public places for a preliminary period of five years. The potential ban will not affect research projects and activities carried out in the framework of security. Restrictions will apply to both the developers of the relevant software and their users. It is assumed that the EU member states will have to create their own supervisory bodies to monitor the implementation of this decision.
Critics of these automated systems, in particular, note that the technology recognizes Asian and African faces much less accurately than whites. According to the results of the study, the number of errors in the identification of people of African and Asian descent exceeds the number of errors in the identification of white people by 10-100 times. A number of studies indicate that the percentage of correctly recognized faces with a camera hanging from the ceiling in a public place is below 10.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, they are thinking about banning automatic face recognition systems. In some US cities at the municipal level, a ban on such systems has already been introduced. These include, in particular, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California and the city of Somerville in Massachusetts. Later, bans were introduced at the level of entire states - for example, Oregon, New Hampshire and California introduced a ban on the use of face recognition systems.
In Britain, the need to ban automatic face recognition systems has flared up with renewed vigor after a number of recent scandals. For example, last fall it became known that the London City Police were transferring images from their databases to the heads of the private company King's Cross Estate. This company managed one of the city's public spaces, which included shops, offices and entertainment venues.
The Guardian says that the final document will be adopted in February this year. The question remains how exactly it will affect Britain, but in any case, until the end of 2020, the country must obey the decisions taken in Brussels.
However, Europe is not unanimous in its desire to abandon facial recognition. So, in Germany, after a successful test in Berlin, the face recognition system is planned to be introduced at 134 stations and 14 airports, and France is expected to become the first EU country where citizens can access protected government sites by scanning their faces. A number of German observers believe that the European Commission may "cancel the plans" of the German government to expand the use of facial recognition systems, if the corresponding ban at the EU level is actually adopted.
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Unfortunately, the situation in Russia is worse: the authorities of many big cities, especially Moscow and St. and terrorists can hide their appearance).
In parallel with the development of total surveillance of the urban population, the financial "elite" are quietly lobbying for the mandatory introduction of biometric identification (while this is a voluntary matter): the Central Bank has already submitted to the Duma a bill obliging all banks to collect biometrics of Russians in all their branches from 2021 under the threat of license revocation …
The fact is that many clients refuse to enter the "electronic concentration camp", and banks do not want to share their client base with the Central Bank. Therefore, for example, Sberbank's biometric customer base is much larger than the "state" EBS (unified biometric system). This struggle is reflected in the behavior of banking sector lobbyists. For example, Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, recently announced that the Central Bank's adoption of the bill has been suspended.
Many experts speak about the unreliable protection of biometric databases - here is a typical opinion from the CEO of Intems, Alexey Titov:
The people for the most part understand this and do not buy into the fables of the cyber-lobbyists about "comfort and safety." The Central Bank, regularly currying favor with the World Bank, jumps out of its pants to fulfill the targets set for it. Hence the "amazing" logic of digitalizers, typical for patients of mental dispensaries: if citizens do not want to give their faces and votes to a single database, then it is necessary to urgently extend bio-identification to all spheres of public life (about how this is done and will be done by mail, in MFC, transport.
However, after the appointment of Mishustin, an adherent of digitalization and total control, as the prime minister, it is unrealistic to expect the state to stop spending hundreds of billions on building a system of total surveillance and an "electronic concentration camp". The same Aksakov, commenting on his recent statement on biometrics to Vedomosti, clarified that the deputies intend to adopt this bill in February, after a number of laxative amendments have been introduced into it. Most likely, small and medium-sized players in the banking market will be given time for retraining or left with the right to choose in the matter of collecting biometrics. That is, we are talking exclusively about "debugging the system", and not at all about the refusal of cyber-lobbyists from their plans for total accounting and control. Unfortunately, there is no civil society in Russia that would be preoccupied with total control and surveillance,as in the same USA and European countries - which means that no one and nothing prevents digitalizers from building their own concentration camp and driving an obedient population into it.