Article Text
Abstract
Although the prevalence of facial recognition-based COVID-19 surveillance tools and techniques, China does not have a facial recognition law to protect its residents’ facial data. Oftentimes, neither the public nor the government knows where people’s facial images are stored, how they have been used, who might use or misuse them, and to what extent. This reality is alarming, particularly factoring in the wide range of unintended consequences already caused by good-intentioned measures and mandates amid the pandemic. Biometric data are matters of personal rights and national security. In light of worrisome technologies such as deep-fake pornography, the protection of biometric data is also central to the protection of the dignity of the citizens and the government, if not the industry as well. This paper discusses the urgent need for the Chinese government to establish rigorous and timely facial recognition laws to protect the public’s privacy, security, and dignity amid COVID-19 and beyond.
- Ethics- Medical
- Policy
- Mental Health
- Communicable Diseases
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Correction notice The article has been corrected since it was published online first. Co-author Barry L Bentley's affiliation has been updated to Cardiff School of Technologies, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK.
Contributors ZS conceived the work, reviewed the literature, drafted, and edited the manuscript. AC, DMD, BLB, CPdV, and YTX reviewed the literature and edited the manuscript. All authors approved the manuscript for submission.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Using AI ethically to tackle covid-19
- Cross-sectional study of COVID-19 knowledge, beliefs and prevention behaviours among adults in Senegal
- How US law will evaluate artificial intelligence for covid-19
- In the interest of public safety: rapid response to the COVID-19 epidemic in Vietnam
- Risk perception and preventive behaviours of COVID-19 among university students, Gondar, Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study
- Integrative clinical, genomics and metabolomics data analysis for mainstream precision medicine to investigate COVID-19
- Deep learning-based facial image analysis in medical research: a systematic review protocol
- Examining Australian’s beliefs, misconceptions and sources of information for COVID-19: a national online survey
- Sociodemographic characteristics and health access associated with COVID-19 infection and death: a cross-sectional study in Malang District, Indonesia
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on utilisation of facility-based essential maternal and child health services from March to August 2020 compared with pre-pandemic March–August 2019: a mixed-methods study in North Shewa Zone, Ethiopia