Daily US Times: Singapore will be the world’s first country to use facial verification in its national identity scheme.
The biometric check will give Singaporeans secure access to both government and private services.
The government’s technology agency says the system will be “fundamental” to the country’s digital economy.
The facial verification system has been trialled with a bank and is now being rolled out nationwide. It not only identifies a person but ensures they are genuinely present.
“You have to make sure that the person is genuinely present when they authenticate, that you’re not looking at a photograph or a video or a replayed recording or a deepfake,” said Andrew Bud, founder and chief executive of iProov, the UK company that is providing the technology.
The technology allows access to government services and will be integrated with the country’s digital identity scheme SingPass.
Mr Bud said: “This is the first time that cloud-based face verification has been used to secure the identity of people who are using a national digital identity scheme.”
Verification or recognition?
Both facial recognition and facial verification depend on scanning a subject’s face, and matching it with an image in an existing database to confirm their identity.
The key difference is that verification requires the explicit consent of the user, and the user gets something in return, such as access to their bank’s smartphone app or their phone.
By contrast, facial recognition technology might scan the face of everyone in a train station, and alert the authorities if a wanted criminal walks past a camera.
Mr Bud said: “Face recognition has all sorts of social implications. Face verification is extremely benign.”
However, privacy advocates contend that consent is a low threshold when dealing with sensitive biometric data.
Ioannis Kouvakas, legal officer with London-based Privacy International, said: “Consent does not work when there is an imbalance of power between controllers and data subjects, such as the one observed in citizen-state relationships.”
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