The Hong Kong government is amending legislation to empower the Director of Immigration to obtain information on airline passengers and to instruct aircraft not to carry a person, causing concern that Hong Kong people will be “restricted from leaving the country”. At the same Time, the Hong Kong airport has quietly installed “face recognition” gates, and has amended privacy provisions to send identifying passenger information to an unidentified “third party”. The Hong Kong government has refused to disclose the identity of the third-party vendor.
Hong Kong airport to install more “face recognition” gates from January 5, 2021, causing doubts from all walks of Life
According to reports, the Hong Kong airport in January 5, the new self-service gates, gates to “face recognition” technology to verify the identity of passengers. The first gates are located in the first passenger terminal 10 to 36 gates, other gates will also be installed in phases. Self-check-in gates are part of the airport’s $9 billion renovation project.
Quietly change the terms of the real name information passed to a mysterious “third party”
The Hong Kong Airport Authority reportedly changed its privacy policy the day before the face recognition gates were added (Jan. 4). The new version of the clause states that “third party service providers” appointed by the AA may be provided with personal data by the AA.
The old version of the privacy statement dated June 28, 2019, found through the Internet Archive, stated that the airport would not provide personal information to third parties unless the passenger had previously consented, and that only anonymous information would be provided to third parties, who would not be able to identify the passenger. These provisions protecting passenger privacy have all been removed in the new version.
In addition, the old version stated that the purpose of using personal data only included verifying passengers’ right to enter restricted areas of the airport and for statistical and analytical purposes. The new version adds new purposes, including “safeguarding aviation and airport security”, but does not elaborate on the meaning of “security”.
So, who is the “third party” that can obtain the passenger’s facial recognition information? The AA refused to disclose the identity of the new gate provider to the Free Asia correspondent.
In the past, when Hong Kong airport set up self-service security gates at the entrance to the restricted area, both the old and new gates used biometric and contactless technology, and the authorities had announced to the Legislative Council that the supplier of the old gates was NEC Hong Kong Ltd.
Technology sector: delete anonymization suspicious can be tracked after the whereabouts
The information technology sector elector Wong Ho Wah said that the authorities deleted the “anonymous information” provision is suspicious. He said that banks or network companies will collect personal information that has not been anonymized, limited to internal communication or customer contact, but the supplier of the automatic gates, according to reason, no longer need to have contact with passengers.
The new terms mean that the airport will provide real name information to third parties, Wong Ho Wah thinks “very scary”, “because anonymization is to protect the security of personal data, you see his purpose, before and after the compilation of statistical data, or optimize business, improve operations, which is understood. But the previous version stressed that it would do anonymization and then do statistical data analysis, but now there is no longer this. Will there be less security for personal data? It is possible.”
The authorities said the information collected will be deleted seven days after the flight leaves Hong Kong, but Wong questioned the authorities are difficult to ensure that third parties delete the relevant information, and that passengers are identified by their faces at the airport, technically it is possible to track their whereabouts afterwards, which is inevitably frightening.
Democratic Party former Member of Parliament Wan Siu Kin criticized the authorities and the supplier’s relationship is suspicious, but also that the authorities increased monitoring and clampdown, “‘sneaky steal tomatoes,’ reluctant to say who is ?doer, with his exit when ?doer’s The information can be made public the handling method is obviously different, giving people a kind of melon field, whether there is an ulterior motive.” He also questioned the “face recognition” before boarding the plane, another means of surveillance more than any other purpose.
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