Phone Users in China Must Now Scan Their Faces
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Today's topic is "Phone Users in China Must Now Scan Their Faces"

Mobile phone users in China must now have their faces scanned when they register a new SIM card. The new rule began on December 1.

The Chinese government has said that the rule will stop SIM cards from being resold and protect people from phone scams. People in China already had to register SIM cards with their ID cards or passports, and many companies had already begun scanning people's faces in 2018.

Most people in China access the internet using their phones and the government has strict control over it – removing or blocking content it does not want citizens to see.

Since 2017, people wanting to use group chats or comment boards have had to register using their real names, though they can still display a different name to other users.

Speaking to the BBC, Jeffrey Ding of Oxford University said that internet security might be one reason for China getting rid of anonymous phone numbers and internet accounts. But he said another likely reason was the government's desire to watch its citizens – or at least try to.

The New York Times has reported that cameras in the Xinjiang region use facial recognition technology to track Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority in western China. The Chinese government has also been accused of putting more than a million Muslims in camps, which it calls "vocational training centers."

In 2017, the South China Morning Post reported that the government was building a facial recognition system that could identify any of the country's 1.3 billion citizens in three seconds. However, the system was having a number of problems, and it was not clear when it would be completed.

In August this year, protesters in Hong Kong destroyed several "smart" lampposts because they were afraid they could be used to track their faces.

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