this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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202
China bans compulsory facial recognition and its use in private spaces like hotel rooms (www.theregister.com)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 3 days ago

Government-sponsored facial recognition aside, I was gonna celebrate this as a rare event of a government doing something right, but then

The measures don’t apply to researchers or to what machine translation of the rules describes as “algorithm training activities” – suggesting images of citizens’ faces are fair game when used to train AI models.

and I feel like that undermines the entire idea, since you can easily hide behind that excuse and not give a shit. And given previous circumstances, I feel like a lot of companies are gonna get away with it.

[–] 21Cabbage 47 points 3 days ago (2 children)

That's a fantastic move but it also goes under "worst guy you know makes a great point".

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And that guy is likely lying about it too.

[–] 21Cabbage 5 points 2 days ago

They didn't include government surveillance in that. I don't doubt for a second the Chinese government's willingness to regulate hotel door locks and whatnot. Better question is how much resources go into enforcement (zero isn't a terrible bet) and how quickly businesses respond to the new regulations (I honestly don't know China in that respect but I could see an American hotel in the same situation waiting until somebody proverbially twisted their arm on the issue).

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm sure that ban doesn't apply to government operated facial recognition cameras though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I think it'd be naive to assume your own government isn't doing the same thing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Facial recognition is dystopian, sure. But its also a security risk against foreign adversaries. No, sir, it is not `on brand´ for China.