For the new national children’s hospital, 2019 has been bookended by criticisms over escalating costs: in January Fianna Fáil’s health spokesperson Stephen Donnelly accused the project of being a “complete and catastrophic failure”. Part of this much-talked about budget has included the purchase of equipment from Chinese video surveillance firm Hikvision, specifically cameras with facial recognition technology (FRT). Hikvision might not be a well-known brand among consumers but it cornered almost half of the global facial recognition technology market in 2018 according to UK analyst firm IHS Markit. So why is it being purchased for the new national children’s hospital? The invasive aspect of facial recognition technology is that it can be used to automatically identify people, minors or otherwise.

Source: The Irish Times December 12, 2019 06:22 UTC