Individuals could be identified by checking faces against a national identity database and subject to fines and arrests (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody, after being arrested by the Iranian ‘morality police’ for not wearing a hijab, sparked massive protests last year.

Just before the incident, Iranian lawmakers had suggested that facial recognition should be used to enforce the country’s strict hijab laws.

In a September interview, the head of an Iranian government agency that enforces morality law said that the technology would be used to identify any ‘failure to observe hijab laws’.

Individuals could be identified by checking faces against a national identity database and subject to fines and arrests.

In the days following the anti-regime protests in Iran, activists noticed that protestors, especially women not wearing a hijab were confronted by police.

The death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody, after being arrested by the Iranian ‘morality police’ for not wearing a hijab, sparked massive protests last year (Picture: PA)

‘Many people haven’t been arrested in the streets,’ Iranian activist Shajarizadeh told Wired. ‘They were arrested at their homes one or two days later,’

Shajarizadeh and others fear that the Iranian forces are getting tipped off by Iran’s use of facial recognition technology.

If true it could be the first known instance of a government using face recognition to impose dress codes on women based on religious beliefs.

Women in Iran are also reportedly receiving citations in the mail for hijab law violations despite not having had an interaction with a law enforcement officer.

Researchers say that Iran’s government has spent years building a digital surveillance apparatus as 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.

Iranian lawmakers had suggested that facial recognition should be used to enforce hijab law (Picture: OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images)

The hijab became mandatory in 1979 when Iran became a theocracy and last year, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi introduced additional hijab and chastity restrictions.

If found violating the rules, Iranian women could lose access to banks, public transportation, and other essential government services, while repeat offenders could spend years in jail or morality schools.

Facial recognition has become the go-to tool for authoritarian regimes to suppress dissent and multiple arms of the Iranian government have access to this technology.

In 2020, Iranian traffic officials started using to issue fines and send women warnings by SMS text about wearing a hijab when inside a vehicle. 

‘The use of face recording cameras can systematically implement this task and reduce the presence of the police, as a result of which there will be no more clashes between the police and citizens,’ Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary legal and judicial committee, told Iranian news outlet Enghelabe Eslami.

Iran could be the perfect example of using facial recognition technology to supress human rights.

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Individuals could be identified from a national identity database.