The Canada Border Services Agency has launched a facial recognition mobile app to track immigrants.
In Canada, a mobile app called ReportIn has been launched to track permanent residents, foreign nationals and asylum seekers who are required to report to border agents while they await final decisions on their deportation or immigration status.
The app uses facial recognition technology and location data to confirm their identity and whereabouts.
Purpose and function of the app
The app is designed as an alternative to incarceration. Through this app, individuals with pending immigration cases can easily report their status to border security officers. So far, 40 people have voluntarily joined the app.
- The information is only obtained when a person submits a report, without continuously tracking their location.
- Facial recognition and smartphone unlocking technology are used.
- Using the app is not mandatory, but other options, including incarceration, can be considered to avoid this.
Some experts have expressed concern that the app could be used as a means of surveillance and infringing on personal freedoms.
The app cost 3.8 million Canadian dollars to develop, and 270 officers have been trained to use it.
Such technologies are seen as part of efforts to improve security, but activists insist that efforts to protect people's rights and freedoms must also continue.
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