The company responsible for operating the São Paulo metro system has been ordered to suspend the use of facial recognition technology.
See also: Social engineering attacks will dominate web3 and metaverse
According to the decision issued on Tuesday by Judge Cynthia Thome in the Court of the State of São Paulo, the Companhia do Metropolitano de São Paulo (METRO) must immediately suspend the process of obtaining and processing biometric data for facial recognition as part of the implementation of an electronic surveillance system.
In addition, the company was ordered to immediately suspend the circulation of new equipment that promotes data collection and processing of biometric data for facial recognition. The decision also stipulates a daily fine in case of non-compliance.
The decision follows a civil lawsuit filed by several civil rights groups seeking a ban on the use of facial recognition technology amid concerns about discrimination. In the latest motion, the entities argued that while this was not clear in the public announcement about the system, one of its goals is to implement a facial recognition system for all subway riders, with the ability to store and share data.
See also: Okta: Support engineer's laptop hacked
The plaintiffs argued that the electronic surveillance system would include facial recognition, with images of all 4 million daily subway users recorded by a system called SecurOS.
The organizations consider the collection of biometric data from all Metro users as “illegal since all faces, from all users, will be read, copied, measured and recorded.” Furthermore, the organizations argued that despite data processing activities, there are no measures to obtain consent and non-consent for the processing of metro users’ biometric data.
Furthermore, the entities argued that there is a lack of transparency regarding the characteristics and risks associated with the processing of personal data by the company that manages the São Paulo metro system. The organizations noted that METRO failed to explain which database will be used to train facial recognition models, which prevents the evaluation of the effectiveness of the project. Furthermore, there is no information on the evaluation and impact measures and risk mitigation when implementing the electronic surveillance system with facial recognition.
According to the latest ruling, Judge Thome noted that METRO has so far not provided precise information about how facial recognition is used in the metro system and how the information is processed.
See also: Storm Cloud: Custom macOS malware discovered
The implementation of the system could affect the fundamental rights of citizens. It should be noted that since February, the protection of personal data is a fundamental right in Brazil.
Information source: zdnet.com
