Iranian authorities plan to use facial recognition to enforce new hijab law
Rights and freedom
Iran
Iranian authorities plan to use facial recognition to enforce new hijab law
Government says it will use technology on public transport in crackdown on womens dress
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Women wearing the hijab at the Imam Khomeini mosque in Tehran. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
Weronika Strzyżyńska
Mon 5 Sep 2022 01.00 EDT
The Iranian government is planning to use facial recognition technology on public transport to identify women who are not complying with a strict new law on wearing the hijab, as the regime continues its increasingly punitive crackdown on womens dress. The secretary of Irans Headquarters for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, announced in a recent interview that the government was planning to use surveillance technology against women in public places following a new decree signed by the countrys hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, on restricting womens clothing. The decree was signed on 15 August, a month after the 12 July national Hijab and Chastity Day, which sparked countrywide protests by women who posted videos of themselves on social media with their heads uncovered on streets and on buses and trains. In recent weeks, the Iranian authorities have responded with a spate of arrests, detentions and forced confessions on television.
The Iranian government has long played with the idea of using facial recognition to identify people who violate the law, said Azadeh Akbari, a researcher at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands. The regime combines violent old-fashioned forms of totalitarian control dressed up in new technologies.
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A still from a video that led to Sepideh Rashno, 28, being arrested for not wearing the hijab properly on a bus, shows her accuser, Rayeheh Rabii, filming her. Photograph: Handout
The hijab, a head-covering worn by Muslim women, became mandatory after Irans revolution in 1979. Yet, over the decades since, women have pushed the limits of the stipulated dress code. Some of the women arrested for defying the new decree were identified after videos were posted online of them being harassed on public transport for not wearing the hijab properly. One, 28-year-old Sepideh Rashno, was arrested after a video circulated on social media of her being berated for improper dress by a fellow passenger, who was then forced off the vehicle by bystanders intervening on Rashnos behalf. According to the human rights group Hrana, Rashno was beaten after her arrest and subsequently forced to apologise on television to the passenger who harassed her.
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Since 2015, the Iranian government has been phasing in biometric identity cards, which include a chip that stores data such as iris scans, fingerprints and facial images. Researchers worry that this information will now be used with facial recognition technology to identify people who violate the mandated dress code, both in the streets and cyberspace.A large chunk of the Iranian population is now in this national biometric data bank, as many public services are becoming dependent on biometric IDs, said Akbari. So the government has access to all the faces; they know where people come from and they can easily find them. A person in a viral video can be identified in seconds. She added: By doing that, the government proves a point: Dont think that a small thing happening on a bus somewhere is going to be forgotten. We know who you are and we will find you and then you will have to suffer the consequences.
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An Iranian police officer speaks with a woman in Tehran. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/sep/05/iran-government-facial-recognition-technology-hijab-law-crackdown
Irish_Dem
(47,014 posts)Without male control, domination and subjugation.
niyad
(113,284 posts)Irish_Dem
(47,014 posts)Deeply rooted in most cultures.
I wonder if there has been much research on this topic.
Why men have such deep seated and intense negative feelings towards women.
And constantly act out those feelings in violent ways.
scarletlib
(3,411 posts)Men have neither of these things. Its a deep deep seated sense of insecurity which manifests itself in forcing dominance and control over that which they can never be or have.
(One theory among many).
Irish_Dem
(47,014 posts)No birth control, etc.
So women are weak, fragile, vulnerable.
Also women do whatever is necessary to keep the peace for the sake of their children.
Men see this as weakness which they hate?
Also shows men as cowards, attacking people who cannot or will not fight back?
Women probably cannot get funding to do this kind of research, why men target women constantly.
what they truly despise is, no matter what feats men accomplish, they can NEVER trump the ability to grow and give birth to a human being - so men control women to show their "superiority"
Irish_Dem
(47,014 posts)Or if it just rumbles around in the male psyche somewhere.
Skittles
(153,160 posts)religion always seems to treat females as lesser beings
Irish_Dem
(47,014 posts)Many religions are blatant in their disregard for women.
niyad
(113,284 posts)birth life, so they will show they have the power to take life.
Studies in prehistory seem to indicate that it wasnt always this way. The advent of the thunder gods(Yahweh, Zeus, etc) seems to have been the advent of this extreme male dominance. They spent hundreds of years defaming the Great Goddess and taking her powers, most especially the Creation of Life , for the male thunder gods.
What seems obvious and natural today is not always the truth.