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France to roll out facial recognition app in November

French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is pushing its plans to roll out an ID program using facial recognition technology to give its citizens a secure digital identity.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the program will be dubbed, Alicem and will be launched in November.

This will place the country together with the states around the world rushing to create “digital identities” to give citizens secure access to everything from their taxes and banks to social security and utility bills.

Singapore is already using facial recognition and has signed an accord to help the United Kingdom prepare its own ID system. India, on the other hand, uses iris scans.

The move to push for this type of technology is faced by oppositions especially after a hacker broke into a secure messaging app this year and it only took him an hour to breach the system.

Privacy group La Quadrature du Net filed the suit against the state because of that incident.

Martin Drago, a lawyer member of the group, said the push for such technology by the present government shows “little interest in the importance of consent and choice.”

However, the case filed last July, won’t suspend the rollout of Alicem next month.

The government explained that there won’t be an integration of the facial recognition biometric into the citizens’ identity databases.

The interior ministry, which developed the Alicem app, says the facial recognition data collected will be deleted when the enrollment process is over.

However, the opponents of the app say it potentially violates Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, which makes free choice mandatory.

Staff Report

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