Iranian media have revealed that the authorities are considering applying facial recognition to CCTV images, to punish women whose dress is deemed immodest.
In Iran, women and defenders of freedoms have not taken off since the death on Friday of Mahsa Amini, after his arrest by the morality police, who accused him of an unsuitable outfit. In solidarity, numerous demonstrations have taken place in recent days in the country, and on social networks, Iranian women have even symbolically burned their hijab. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the law requires that all women, regardless of their nationality or religious beliefs, wear a veil that covers the head and neck while concealing the hair. However, over the past two decades, more and more women in Tehran and other major cities are letting strands of hair, or even more, protrude from their veils. To keep an eye on things, the morality police patrol the streets of the cities and regularly arrest women dressed in a manner deemed immodest, to call them to order.
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But the Iranian authorities are thinking, according to several media outlets in the country, of providing the morality police with a new and powerful tool: the authorities are in fact studying the possibility of using video surveillance images in the public space, in particular the subway. A project revealed in particular by the reformist newspaper Arman Emrouz and spotted by Courrier international plans to apply to these images an artificial intelligence capable of performing facial recognition, to identify passers-by whose dress would be deemed inappropriate with regard to the codes required by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A fine could be sent to the home of the offenders
According to other newspapers, this technology, if deployed, could make it possible to send the fine provided for in these cases directly to the homes of the offenders: 300,000 tomans (12 dollars) for not wearing the hijab, 150,000 tomans for a jacket that does not cover the shoulders and legs modestly, 85,000 tomans for too much makeup.
But this project would have remained only a rumor if it did not directly resonate with recent remarks by Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpaygani, the secretary of the organization for the promotion of virtue and the rejection of vice – an institution of State, comparable to the “ministryof the same name in Taliban Afghanistan, or the “Committeeidentical in Saudi Arabia. According to this official responsible for scrupulously enforcing the moral precepts of Iran’s Islamic theocracy, facial recognition technology would today be “so advanced that it can recognize people from their images in the cameras“: following these remarks, Golpaygani clearly indicated that his organization was studying the possibility of verbalizing people directly from video surveillance.
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However, these comments have caused controversy within the country’s borders. The Club of Young Iranian Journalists first clarified that the cameras currently installed in the metro do not provide enough clear images to recognize faces without risk of being mistaken. On the other hand, several politicians from the reform movement have criticized Golpaygani’s plan, including former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi.
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