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Iran Says Face Recognition Will ID Women Breaking Hijab Laws (wired.com) 156

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Last month, a young woman went to work at Sarzamineh Shadi, or Land of Happiness, an indoor amusement park east of Iran's capital, Tehran. After a photo of her without a hijab circulated on social media, the amusement park was closed, according to multiple accounts in Iranian media. Prosecutors in Tehran have reportedly opened an investigation. Shuttering a business to force compliance with Iran's strict laws for women's dress is a familiar tactic to Shaparak Shajarizadeh. She stopped wearing a hijab in 2017 because she views it as a symbol of government suppression, and recalls restaurant owners, fearful of authorities, pressuring her to cover her head. But Shajarizadeh, who fled to Canada in 2018 after three arrests for flouting hijab law, worries that women like the amusement park worker may now be targeted with face recognition algorithms as well as by conventional police work.

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. Shajarizadeh and others monitoring the ongoing outcry have noticed that some people involved in the protests are confronted by police days after an alleged incident -- including women cited for not wearing a hijab. "Many people haven't been arrested in the streets," she says. "They were arrested at their homes one or two days later."

Although there are other ways women could have been identified, Shajarizadeh and others fear that the pattern indicates face recognition is already in use -- perhaps the first known instance of a government using face recognition to impose dress law on women based on religious belief. Mahsa Alimardani, who researches freedom of expression in Iran at the University of Oxford, has recently heard reports of women in Iran receiving citations in the mail for hijab law violations despite not having had an interaction with a law enforcement officer. Iran's government has spent years building a digital surveillance apparatus, Alimardani says. The country's national identity database, built in 2015, includes biometric data like face scans and is used for national ID cards and to identify people considered dissidents by authorities.

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Iran Says Face Recognition Will ID Women Breaking Hijab Laws

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  • by haruchai ( 17472 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @10:45PM (#63197934)

    ...to enforce medieval misogyny

    • by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @10:53PM (#63197950)
      Gotta love how technology can go in both or multiple ways. Oh, wait. You mean 95% of the uses for facial recognition are nefarious?
    • The hilarious thing is that it didn't start out as misogyny. The reason for the Hijabs was so if bandits ran through your settlement they couldn't tell which were the old and young women. The hope was they'd make off with grandma in the confusion.

      But everything has to be a religious proclamation from God with ancient people, so we get this insanity. Same reason they can't eat pork. They didn't know how long to cook it to kill the parasites so they just declared God said no.
      • But everything has to be a religious proclamation from God with ancient people, so we get this insanity. Same reason they can't eat pork. They didn't know how long to cook it to kill the parasites so they just declared God said no.

        I rather suspect it was actually about cross-contamination. Even a goatherder can figure out readily enough that they get sick if they don't cook meat until it's no longer translucent, but nobody knew about germs and if your hands looked clean and smelled clean, they were clean, right?

        • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          But everything has to be a religious proclamation from God with ancient people, so we get this insanity. Same reason they can't eat pork. They didn't know how long to cook it to kill the parasites so they just declared God said no.

          I rather suspect it was actually about cross-contamination. Even a goatherder can figure out readily enough that they get sick if they don't cook meat until it's no longer translucent, but nobody knew about germs and if your hands looked clean and smelled clean, they were clean, right?

          Pigs require huge amounts of water. Want to minimize water use in the desert? Don't grow pigs.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Red states will eventually start using facial recognition to identify women breaking abortion laws.

    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @11:09PM (#63197978)

      Pretty sure that making lists of "undesirables" is a step on the fascism howto. https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]

      This list also checks a large number of boxes on the GOP platform. https://www.boredpanda.com/sig... [boredpanda.com]

    • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @01:28AM (#63198132)

      "Red states will eventually start using facial recognition to identify women breaking abortion laws."

      No shit. Eventually someone will abuse police power to do it as computer access is casually controlled. Red states tacitly approve murdering minorities under cover of law. They have a few professional forces but many chiefs and sheriffs are elected. They get busted for corruption regularly and that's just the ones stupid enough to get caught or pursued by citizen activists.

      https://www.aclu.org/other/fig... [aclu.org]

      White males who don't dress like trash have the edge, especially articulate ones who know to speak with what the military once called "command presence". Everyone else (like women cops want to intimidate) is fucked at the officer's discretion except (since the real outlaws aged out), oddly, bikers who are sometimes pulled over just to chat. Been there, used social skills and gray man attire I wear anyway so no problem. OTOH many of my African-American Airmanbros got pulled often for driving while black including on poor computer nerd who had no idea why.

      Civvies can stalk too:

      https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

      https://pimeyes.com/en [pimeyes.com]

      https://www.computerworld.com/... [computerworld.com]

      Not all cops are corrupt but enough of the rest cover for them to keep Internal Affairs employed. Cops are very good at closing ranks. The thin blue line is for them not you.

      https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]

      Did I miss anything?

      • Did I miss anything?

        Probably. Although your list is very well done and representative. No system is perfect. But the way to maintain a functioning society is to acknowledge faults and continuously try to improve.

        For reasons that I can't understand, there is a large population of the world allergic to facts that contradict their world view.

      • and yet... the overwhelming majority of black people in the US want the same or more police in their neighborhoods [newsweek.com]. That stat must burn you up.
  • by Bodhammer ( 559311 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @10:58PM (#63197970)
    “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

    George Orwell, 1984
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      I know the book says "stamping", and based on what I've read, the word "stomp" grew out of "stamp". Perhaps in 1948 when Orwell wrote the book, stomp had not become mainstream, but for its true meaning, I believe "stomp" is more correct here, as it denotes more violence than "stamp". Or perhaps the copy editor missed it and it stayed in the book as "stamp". Either way, it holds true today, not only in this situation in Iran, but also in the way corporations have held the planet as hostage (with many than
      • The whole point of Newspeak was to reduce the lexicon, not to add variants such as 'stomp'.

      • I bet you are really a hoot at parties!

        (hoot (v.) "to call or shout in disapproval or scorn," c. 1600, probably related to or a variant of Middle English houten, huten "to shout, call out" (c. 1200), which is more or less imitative of the sound of the thing. First used of bird cries, especially that of the owl, mid-15c. Meaning "to laugh" is from 1926. Related: Hooted; hooting. A hoot owl (1826) is distinguished from a screech owl.)
    • There's still a chance religious extremists will screw us over, but the window is closing. A large age imbalance coupled with low education levels lead to a conservative backlash used by right wing authoritarian opportunists to try to seize power. There's still a little of this in America with with Evangelicals, but it's petering out.

      America is important because we tend to be the ones supporting authoritarian governments for short term economic interests. With our right wing fading out that's going away
  • Iranian government and Iranians both are tech-savvy and play games of chicken and egg all the time. After all, in the age of the internet, it's hard to put a lid of people's access, be it the Great Firewall of China or parachuting Starlink connectivity packages over Tehran, but all this comes to a head when the surveillance mechanism defies a digital medium, such as taking a snapshot of someone's face in public or the license plate on a car. The only hope Iranians have at the moment to fend off something
    • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @12:07AM (#63198052)
      or for the majority of the population and/or the military to cease to care about the continued existence of the current government. Remember, the mullahs and morality cops are less that 1% of the population. 99 people can easily beat the shit out of even an armed person and suspend them from the nearest tall structure.
      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        The regime is slowly ramping up the executions hoping there is a cut-off point where the people decide it isn't worth it to continue active resistance. If it blows up, it will be very nasty indeed. The R. Guard and Basij are not going to give up their source of money easily.

      • Re:Stuxnet aside ... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @04:41AM (#63198358)

        That is, in essence, what happened in Iran in 1979. Protesters came in droves and basically said "You have 30 rounds in your gun, so 30 of us will die before you do. But you will, too. Choose!"

        And the fourth largest army of the world capitulated.

        It's fascinating that the very people who should know this the best apparently forgot how this works.

    • but if it saves women

      That's a bit far having to wear a Hijab is hardly life threatening. Look I don't think they should have to, but its not like we don't enforce dress codes in western societies either. Don't believe me? Go down to your local shops naked or in your underwear, better still your local school. Recently in New Zealand a member of parliament was evicted for not wearing a tie. Think about that, an elected representative was stopped for doing their job because of a dress code. Not to long ago it was unacceptable for

      • by lsllll ( 830002 )
        Read my post again. The "it" in "if it saves women" refers to hackers corrupting the facial database, not to women wearing hijab.
  • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @11:34PM (#63198004)
    The women are rioting and rebelling, and the mullahs would really like to crush them, but the society is also largely built around the idea that they’re property and need to be controlled.

    So, it’s generally considered acceptable to kill men. In that region, slaughtering men happens everyday before breakfast. But women? The mullahs aren’t quite sure how hard they can crack down on the women before a bunch of enraged husbands and fathers storm the the palaces and rip the holy men limb from limb while the army looks the other way. It’s not about human rights, just that you never, NEVER mess with a man’s property.

    Downmod incoming.
    • The thing is that the whole shit doesn't fly too well with the young population. They tend to be more concerned with real issue than clinging to religion.

    • So, itâ(TM)s generally considered acceptable to kill men. In that region, slaughtering men happens everyday before breakfast.

      They figured out the whole world won't stand for the wholesale slaughter of women, but they will put up with the murder of basically any number of Iranian men, so what they're doing now is executing men who participate in the protests. They seem to believe that if they simply kill all the men who are aiding the women, that the unrest will die out with them. And this is quite possibly true, because women in Iran have no political power other than mass protest. They are property.

      This is what leaps to mind eve

      • Supporting any Abrahamic religion is supporting subjugation of women

        How can you say that and in the same comment say "whole world won't stand for the wholesale slaughter of women, but they will put up with the murder of basically any number of Iranian men".

        What it is about is subjugation everyone, they don't care who, they just want to keep power. Its like most power structures, including religion the rulers want to keep power, not complicated really.

    • if it was the men would get their property under control. Iran's people want to be progressive, but the old foggies in charge are still making trouble.

      They'll be dead and burrier in a few years and younger more progressive types will take over. And women will continue to get more rights because every country on earth needs them in the economy.
  • I see the Iranian government is doubling down even in the face of nation-wide protests about this very topic. Surely this will quell those dissenters!

    Iranians, best of luck to you.

  • by jonfr ( 888673 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @11:45PM (#63198018)

    The main mistake that the protesters in Iran are doing is that they are (best information I have) is not to target government run places, protests in the street are just a minor problem for the Iran religious totalitarian government. Unless that start to change, this is going to be over before it starts and the results is going to be more dead men and women, both with sham trials and executions and other way the Iran religious totalitarian government kills people.

    There's only one way to get rid of totalitarian once they have gained power and that is to fight them brutally, at great cost to human life (sadly). Since once totalitarians gain power, they never let go of it and increase their oppression with each protests that happens.

    • Far too simplistic (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @02:20AM (#63198180)

      The past 50 years have seen many countries in Europe and Latin America emerge from dictatorships without such brutal fighting. Whilst the details of the process may vary, the underlying cause in those cases was a collapse in the legitimacy of the regime, often, though not always, helped along by the withdrawal of external support.

      By contrast the Chinese regime responded brutally to its scary moment - Tiananmen Square - and has not been seriously challenged since, despite over optimistic comments following some resistance to Covid lockdowns.

      A possible solution in Iran consists of seeking out the foot soldiers of the regime and their families; publicly releasing the names and addresses of police and Revolutionary guards, as well as those of their parents / next of kin would have 'interesting' consequences. Beyond that? Brutal civil wars have not done well in Africa or Myanmar, and collapsing economies tend to cause massive suffering for the poor; I'm struggling to think of a country where they've ended well.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        I think there is a number of variables that govern whether a dictatorship can be overthrown by a velvet revolution

        How strong is the dictatorship's grip on power? Often it's not very strong, it's the nature of governments where leadership is based purely on power that there will always be people challenging that power at first opportunity. Often, as you said, that grip on power depends on external support, like many communist governments in Eastern Europe or Latin American banana republics. In Iran's case, t

    • coups just lead to a new, slightly different dictator. Maybe they've got a new hat or something.

      General protests change people's minds. Especially when the gov't over reacts and cracks down brutally.

      Remember Occupy Wall Street? That's how you shut down a protest. Let them do it for a while, have your buddies in the media interview the crazies in the movement and treat them as though they're running it, wait for the public to lose interest and then quietly arrest everyone with a slap on the wrist jus
  • by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @11:45PM (#63198020)

    So you can all go fuck yourselves.

    that is all.

  • Hopefully it will be used to ID morality cop pigs who are abusing the public as well. After the revolution comes, the people need to know whom to merely disgrace and whom to give the Ceausescu therapy to. MAKE READY! TAKE AI....
  • government uses surveillance to spy on its citizens and/or enforce its rules. we've seen this multiple times before
  • Only massive violence, insurgent style, can overthrow fundamentalist governments from within. In that Iran is quite like its secular (pseudo-tradcon) NeoSoviet buddy.

    Superstition is far more powerful than secular ideologies because superstitions exist to exalt humans over different believers in order to socially enslave them. The only short term treatment is mass insurgency because superstitions thrive on external attack and martyrs are features not bugs.

    The only distant hope for Iran is that the state beco

  • I truly hope the citizens of Iran overthrow the evil that controls them. I truly hope the world some day sheds religion as well, seemingly the root of most of the evil bestowed upon people.
    • Unless you are going to class Communism and Nazism as religions, let alone all the imperialisms of the past, your comments seems to reflect serious ignorance. Want to try again?

      • Religion, ideology... same shit, different color, but passes the smell test.

        In essence, a religion is an ideology that justifies itself with some higher power. Most secular ideologies aspire to some higher goal. Generally, religions are more stable in the long run because the promise they deliver cannot be checked. That's pretty much where Communism eventually failed because it promised a paradise on earth instead of in some distant fairy land, and people could actually check that it's bollocks.

        Religions so

        • We all have ideologies (think liberal democracy!), so picking on religion doesn't actually move the conversation forward.

          This is an interesting list of the worst wars of history

          https://borgenproject.org/top-... [borgenproject.org]

          However it excludes longer term conflicts such as the Mongol invasion of Europe and China over the centuries, or indeed all the migrant groups who chewed the Roman Empire to death.

      • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        Are you really going to try and claim that religion hasn't lead to many significant wars, mass slaughter, wholesale oppression and brainwashing for millennia?

        You mention Naziism like it had no religious ideology behind it. What was the holocaust based on if it wasn't religion?

        • In the broad sweep of history, religious wars are the exception, not the norm. You can broaden it to 'ideologies' to add Nazism, though actually Nazism is merely another ethnocentric ideology, just a bit more extreme. Certainly WWI, or the Congo war shown in this list can't be seriously counted as 'religious'.

          https://borgenproject.org/top-... [borgenproject.org]

          This gives you the list of deadliest overall. It excludes long term invasions such as the Mongols of Europe or the Bantu down Africa, which killed millions over the cen

    • I am atheist but I don't hope the world sheds religion, some people need that hope, community and comfort that religion provides. Like most things its moderation that is the key. To me the point when it becomes unacceptable is when you start forcing other people conform to your beliefs.

      Maybe one day people will be able to do without religion, but I don't believe it can or should happen with the current way the human mind works.

  • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @02:14AM (#63198172) Journal
    The west needs to open our immigration to single women and women with kids under age 16, all from Iran or Afghanistan.
    The idea being that if Iran and Afghanistan is going to treat their women poorly, then let's simply allow them to come to the west.

    I wonder how those nations will do if all the single women leave, or the wives with kids are suddenly gone with a divorce being filed against the husband?
    • They're ahead of you. Single women must not leave the country. Actually, they must not even travel altogether.

    • Typical liberal "I have this idea, and you're going to foot the bill to make it happen"
      How about you start a Gofundme and bring them in yourself?
      Because little happens in a liberals world without using someone elses money to make their goals happen

      • You could always move to a place where the government gets no funding. Liberterian utopias like west or central Africa.

      • Yeah how dare somebody suggest that the US government spend money to pursue our own national interests when that money could, instead, be used to fund tax cuts for the rich. Seriously did you even read your own post? The US spends $800B/year on defense. If we could instead achieve our national security goals spending half of that by allowing refugees from horrific places to come here and be a part of our country instead, how the heck would that be bad?
    • then let's simply allow them to come to the west.

      Yeah, because women in Iran have the freedom to make choices about their own life and the only thing preventing them from leaving is finding a western country which would "allow" them ...

      Got any other overly simplistic ideas that won't work?

      • Women, as well as family members, can and do help others.
        And it is amazing the help that can come from oversea relatives.
    • by G00F ( 241765 )

      No for or against the idea but ... Just so you are aware.

      What would happen, is women would get to USA and then immediately apply for the rest of the family. Yes even the divorced husband would qualify. https://www.uscis.gov/family/f... [uscis.gov] and https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/us... [unhcr.org]

      Again, not stating for or against.

      I have a Jewish friend who came over with his Jewish dad from Russia/USSR, and when he became an adult was able to make use of it to get his non Jewish mother over. (parents where never married iirc)

  • Are you sure about that one?
  • they should dress like men and put on fake beards & mustaches, dark sunglasses, etc...
  • The more oppressive the Iranian government becomes, the more they invite a long-overdue civil war.
    That said, the amount of persecution that most people choose to put up with before they take action melts my brain.

  • Hope there's a general revolution and they kick out all those old men and their outdated bullshit.
  • Believe anything you want, but please, at the end of the day, please take your, and only your life.

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