SINGAPORE will become the world’s first country to use facial verification in its national ID scheme, but privacy advocates are alarmed by what they say is an intrusive system vulnerable to abuse.
Facial verification has already been adopted in various forms around the world, with Apple and Google implementing the technology for tasks like unlocking phones and making payments.
Singapore authorities, for their part, are frequently accused of targeting government critics and taking a hard line on dissent, and activists are concerned about how the face scanning tech will be used.
Those behind the Singapore scheme stress facial verification are different to recognition as it requires user consent, but privacy advocates remain skeptical.(AFP)
