A controversial law requiring new mobile subscribers in China to provide facial scans has now come into effect.
Under the new rule, consumers signing up for a mobile plan must present their national ID card and submit a facial scan. Announced in September, Chinese authorities say the measure is intended to “protect the legitimate rights and interests of citizens in cyberspace.”
Officials say the requirement aims to curb identity fraud and curb criminal activity. Privacy advocates, however, worry that the policy is part of a broader effort to eliminate anonymity online and make it easier to link digital identities to specific individuals.
Linking online accounts and activity to real-world identities can deter dissent and make surveillance more effective. This concern is heightened by recent unrest in Hong Kong, where protesters have faced harsh responses for opposing perceived encroachments on the region’s autonomy. The new verification requirement has therefore intensified fears about state monitoring and its chilling effects on free expression.
Another major concern is how the collected facial data will be stored, shared, and used after verification. Many Western jurisdictions have strict data-protection laws that require explicit consent and clear limits on data usage; comparable legal safeguards are limited in China. That raises the risk that biometric information could be repurposed without users’ knowledge.
Facial scans collected during mobile registrations might also be used to further train national facial recognition models that have already been deployed for intrusive purposes. In Xinjiang, for example, Chinese authorities operate an extensive facial recognition system alongside geofencing tools that alert officials if identified individuals move beyond a designated area. Beijing characterizes these measures as necessary responses to incidents of violence and unrest, which it attributes to extremist activity. Human Rights Watch and other organizations, however, describe the policies as violations of international human rights norms.
China operates one of the world’s largest surveillance networks, with roughly 170 million security cameras and plans to add hundreds of millions more in the coming years. To extract useful insights from this vast sensor array, authorities and state-affiliated organizations are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence.
The Chinese AI company SenseTime, reportedly one of the world’s most highly valued AI startups, supplies technology used across the country’s surveillance infrastructure. SenseTime’s Viper platform is designed to process and analyze more than 100,000 simultaneous real-time video streams from sources such as traffic cameras and ATMs, automatically tagging and tracking individuals across feeds.
It is not clear whether companies like SenseTime will be granted direct access to facial scans collected during mobile registrations, but it is plausible that biometric data could be integrated into broader surveillance systems to help identify people the authorities consider security risks.
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