BEIJING — Chinese hospitals are using facial recognition to identify people who sell doctors’ appointments at an illegal markup, the latest application of an emerging technology that is being used in places to tighten Communist Party control over the country’s 1.4 billion people. Chinese public hospitals require patients to line up for appointments on the day they wish to see a doctor, creating a lucrative secondary market for scalpers to sell them better numbers and save on waiting time. China’s markets are rife with counterfeit goods and fraud, and China has been aggressively applying facial recognition technology in everything from distribution of toilet paper by public lavatories to identifying jaywalkers — virtually in real time. Such data is being fed into a system of “social credit” that rewards or penalizes individuals based on their behaviour. Human rights activists say “social credit” is too rigid and might unfairly label people as untrustworthy without telling them they have lost status or how they can win it back.

Source: National Post February 24, 2019 07:11 UTC