Seoul – South Korea will soon launch a pilot project using artificial intelligence, facial recognition and thousands of CCTV cameras to track the movements of people infected with coronavirus, despite concerns about privacy attacks.
The nationally funded project in Bucheon, one of the most populous cities in the country on the outskirts of Seoul, will be launched in January, a city official said.
The program uses AI algorithms and face recognition technology to analyze images collected by more than 10,820 CCTV cameras and track the movements of an infected person, anyone close to them, and wearing a mask, according to a 110-page business plan. the city was sent to the Minister of Science and ICT (Information and Communication Technology), and handed over to Reuters by a parliamentary speaker criticizing the project.
Governments around the world have turned to new technologies and expanded their legal capabilities to try to stem the tide of COVID-19 infection. China, Russia, India, Poland and Japan as well as a few U.S. states are in the process of issuing or at least examining the COVID-19 patient monitoring programs, according to a March report from Columbia Law School in New York. .
A Bucheon official said the program should reduce the inconvenience to overcrowded tracking teams in a city with a population of over 800,000, and help use teams more effectively and efficiently.
South Korea already has an aggressive, high-profile contact tracking system that favors credit card records, mobile location data and CCTV footage, among other personal information.
However, it still relies on a large number of epidemic investigators, who usually work 24-hour shifts, tracking and contacting potential cases of coronavirus.
In bid for national funding for a pilot project in late 2020, Bucheon mayor Jang Deog-cheon argued that such a plan would make tracking faster.