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<aside> ➡️ Examples of Biometrics-based Surveillance Technologies: Facial Recognition Technologies, Digital ID, Voice Analysis Technologies
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<aside> 🔷 In Auguts 2023, Tagesschau.de, the website of one of Germany's main public TV news programs, revealed that the Iranian government uses surveillance cameras, including technology provided by Bosch, a German technology company, to enforce mandatory hijab laws against women [26]. Although Bosch confirmed selling thousands of cameras to Iran from 2016 to 2018, it denies that these cameras possess facial recognition capabilities. Nonetheless, Bosch conducted training on video analytics and “face recognition” in Tehran in 2017. Activists claim that Bosch cameras can also monitor crowds to identify protests. Even without biometric facial recognition, video footage could potentially be matched to faces using separate software. Despite calls from activists for accountability, Bosch refutes allegations that its technology facilitates human rights abuses against Iranian women.
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<aside> 📌 (UDHR Article 3: Right to life, liberty, security; UDHR Article 2: Freedom from discrimination; UDHR Article 12: Privacy; UDHR Article 19: Freedom of Expression & Access to Information; UDHR Article 21: Political Participation; UDHR Article 20 Right of Peaceful Assembly and Association; UDHR Article Freedom of Belief and Religion; UDHR Article 13 Right to Free Movement; and other socio-economic rights)
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The Iranian government has made clear its intent to use automated surveillance systems to control and suppress individual freedoms, though concrete evidence about exact systems and implementations remains scarce, posing a challenge for research in this area. Based on arrests enabled by identification of certain individuals, as well as statements by the Iranian government, it is evident there are efforts underway to expand high-tech monitoring capabilities.
A central aim of Iran's surveillance push is enforcing mandatory hijab laws targeting women. This issue has become a major battleground for women's rights, gaining new urgency after the death of Mahsa Amini in Morality Police custody and subsequent protests. Previously, traffic cameras were used to identify and penalize hijab 'violators' in vehicles. Some reports indicate importation of Chinese surveillance technologies while domestic capabilities may also be advancing over time.
Without access to free and fair legal systems, individuals in Iran lack means to scrutinize or challenge surveillance practices or obtain redress for violations enabled by these technologies. This power imbalance can further curtail rights and disproportionately harm marginalized groups like women, activists, LGBTQIA+ communities, minorities, etc.
In addition, Human rights groups closely monitor for involvement of any non-Iranian companies in the government's rollout of biometric smart ID systems, which rely on collecting fingerprints, photos, and other sensitive data to verify identities. Rigorous due diligence must assess enabling of repression through these technologies. Specific human rights concerns include: targeting of women to enforce hijab laws by restricting internet, employment, and imposing imprisonment, persecution of minorities, dissidents, and activists through ubiquitous monitoring, privacy violations that lead to self-censorship and limited free expression/assembly, lack of fair systems to contest errors and misidentification.