Iran Will Detect People Who Don’t Wear Headscarf with Face Recognition

After Mahsa Amini, who was detained in Iran on September 16, 2022 and died suspiciously because of the headscarf, the Iranian government and the public came face to face, many people were imprisoned, executed, and nationwide bans began. Although the internet and social media are banned nationwide, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites and Proxy support coming to WhatsApp It gave some relief to the citizens living in Iran.

A proposal submitted to Iran’s legislative body, the Islamic Shura Council in the past months, had drawn much attention. The proposal went into effect recently.

They will detect those who do not wear headscarves with facial recognition systems.

Since 2015, the Iranian government has spent millions of dollars improving the country’s security and monitoring systems. These investments include biometric photos, chip IDs, facial recognition systems and many more digital security measures. Although many of these investments were developed to protect the country from foreign powers, after a while these systems began to target local people as well. For example, the government has given women who do not wear the hijab properly according to its rules. She was sending SMS about how to wear hijab correctly.

On top of all this, the approval of the law last August, which caused women who did not wear the headscarf correctly to lose their rights in banks, public transportation and public institutions, triggered these events. After the events, he told the Islamic Shura Council “installed facial recognition systems detecting women who do not wear headscarvesA proposal was made for ”, but the proposal was not accepted.

Recently, this proposal was accepted as law. This system, which was previously only used to detect women who drive, will now be used to detect women who do not wear a headscarf or who wear it incorrectly. According to the law, women who wear the headscarf incorrectly will be warned and fined, but More severe sanctions will be imposed on women who do not wear headscarves..

With this law, Iran is officially after China and the USA (only in some states) It became the third country to monitor its citizens 24/7 with artificial intelligence supported facial recognition systems.