Scan Your Face before You Get a New Mobile Number in China

China has instructed its telecom operators to collect face scans of new phone users while registering at offline outlets, starting from the month of December, as China continues to tighten its cyberspace controls.

China’s information technology authority, Ministry of Industry and information technology had issued a notice in the month of September this year on “safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of citizens online”, which also laid out strict rules for enforcing real-name registration.

The notice also added, “In next steps, our ministry will continue to increase supervision and inspection and strictly promote the management of real-name registration for phone users”.

The recent notice has said the telecom operators must use, “artificial intelligence and other technical means” in order to verify the identities of the people when they take a new phone number.

A customer service executive working in China’s telecom company Unicom told AFP that from the December 1 “portrait matching” requirement means now customers who are registering for a new phone number must have to record themselves and their face, turning their head and blinking. 

Since 2013, the Chinese government has pushed for the real-name registration for the phone users, which would require the ID cards are linked to the new phone numbers. Now, the move to leverage AI comes as facial recognition technology is gaining traction across China, where the technology is used for everything from supermarket checkouts to surveillance reasons.

Meanwhile, researchers have warned the telecom authority of the privacy risks associated with gathering facial recognition data. Though by now consumers have widely embraced the technology, but China saw one of its first lawsuits on facial recognition, last month.

In the lawsuit, a Chinese professor filed a claim against a safari park in Hangzhou, eastern Zhejiang province that wanted his face scans for entry, according to the local court.

In addition to this, the authorities have forced the mobile users, the Twitter-like Chinese social media site Weibo to roll out real-name registration in the year 2012. On the other hand, social media has ramped up in recent years as part of the Chinese government’s aim push to “promote the healthy, orderly development of the Internet that protects state security and public interest".

The new system has thus both, good sides and bad sides to believe, but it is also true that every new experiment also gives way to a new trend.