China’s facial recognition mania now extends to public housing, trash cans

China’s sprawling use of facial recognition technology has now stretched to trash cans and public housing as the country continues to embrace the controversial yet extremely efficient mode of identification.

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Beijing authorities are currently trialing a face-scanning system in several residential neighborhoods to supervise a nascent garbage sorting program. This is after it kicked off a project to stem illegal subletting of government-funded flats earlier this year.

The developments come amid rising resistance to the frictionless identification technology in many Western countries. Oakland recently joined San Francisco among the US cities that have banned municipal authorities from using the technology amid privacy concerns. A legal challenge has also been mounted in the UK against the use of the tech by police, on the grounds that it constitutes an unlawful violation of privacy.

In Beijing, an automated entrance gate with face-scan tech has been installed in the first batch of 13 public rental housing communities, according to state-owned Xinhua News Agency. By the end of October, the new system is expected to cover all 59 neighborhoods.

The face-scanning feature is aimed at ensuring security and “fairness” where rent is only half of that in neighboring areas for non-public housing, said supplier Uniview, a Hangzhou-based surveillance camera giant, in a social media post last week.

“The issue of how to ensure efficient management of public-funded homes and stem subletting to uphold its fairness in distribution has become a challenge to city administrators,” said Uniview. It added that the face-scanning system has been well received by neighbors as a more convenient alternative to previous access control.

Facial recognition has also found its way onto trash cans as a means of preventing incorrect waste management. According to Beijing Youth Daily, a total of 26 smart bins now stand in a community in Xicheng district, where residents have to scan their faces before disposing waste according to different categories.

The smart bins, which are equipped with cameras, are aimed at reminding residents to sort their waste appropriately – between paper, plastic, and cans, for example – and will identify those who don’t, according to the report. In Shanghai, disposing litter improperly already means a hefty fine and a possible reduction in a person’s social credit score. “Good” waste disposal behavior can mean rewards, such as free bus tickets and a new dust bin.

China is developing wider “name and shame” policies aimed at combating antisocial behavior, with facial recognition being deployed to prevent jaywalking and hospital ticket scalpers who take advantage of people wanting to jump long waiting lists. Chinese technology companies have also applied facial recognition and AI solutions to a swathe of commercial sectors, including retail, security, hospitality, leisure, and banking.

Many analysts say the country lends itself to the early adoption of the technology due to its large population and the existence of massive, centralized identity databases. Beijing has expressed enthusiasm about extending artificial intelligence technologies to many walks of life, from catching criminals, detecting cancers, to developing self-driving cars.

China is also home to the world’s largest surveillance camera makers amid state-directed efforts to build an “omniscient” surveillance network by 2020.

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