In ever-growing numbers, Iranian women are refusing to comply with hijab law, in some cases even burning the headpieces. However women report that Iranian state is using facial recognition as a tool of tracking down and penalizing the women who defy hijab law.
After Iranian lawmakers suggested last year that face recognition should be used to police hijab law, the head of an Iranian government agency that enforces morality law said in a September interview that the technology would be used “to identify inappropriate and unusual movements,” including “failure to observe hijab laws.” Individuals could be identified by checking faces against a national identity database to levy fines and make arrests, he said.
Two weeks later, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman named Jina Mahsa Amini died after being taken into custody by Iran’s morality police for not wearing a hijab tightly enough. Her death sparked historic protests against women’s dress rules, resulting in an estimated 19,000 arrests and more than 500 deaths.
Throughout the protests, the hijab has unsurprisingly emerged as as symbol of rebellion.
In ever-growing numbers, Iranian women are refusing to comply with hijab law, in some cases even burning the headpieces. But now, Wired reports that the Iranian state is likely using facial recognition as a tool of tracking down and penalizing the women for rejecting the state mandate — which, as Amini’s horrifying fate makes clear, may have violent consequences for those that the state considers offenders.
“A grim reality”
“Many people haven’t been arrested in the streets,” Shaparak Shajarizadeh, an Iranian activist who fled the country in 2018, told Wired, pointing to a concerning pattern that seemingly supports state use of facial recognition. “They were arrested at their homes one or two days later.”
Though Iran has a history with surveillance tech, as Wired notes, this would be the first recorded instance of a state using such software to enforce religious dress codes — a grim reality, and one bound to result in more violence.
Source: WIRED