Cathryn Grothe, a research analyst at Freedom House, a US government-backed nonprofit devoted to human rights, says she has seen a shift in Iran in recent years from a reliance on informers and physical patrols to forms of automated digital surveillance to achieve goals. critics.
Like Alimardani, she has received reports of people using online platforms to organize in Iran who suspect they were somehow recognized and then attacked by authorities offline. The Iranian government has been monitoring social media for years to identify opponents of the regime, Grothe says, but if the government’s claims about the use of facial recognition are true, this is the first time it knows of any government using the technology. used to enforce gendered dress laws. .
Facial recognition has become a desirable tool for authoritarian regimes around the world as a way to suppress dissent, Grothe says, though many lack the necessary technical infrastructure. “Iran is a case where they have both the government will and the physical capacity,” she says.
Multiple branches of the Iranian government have access to facial recognition technology. Iranian traffic officials began using it in 2020 to issue fines and warn women by text message about wearing a hijab in a vehicle. Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, the head of the country’s parliamentary legal and judicial commission, expressed support last year for “exclusion from social services and financial fines” for hijab violations. “Using facial capture cameras can systematically accomplish this task and reduce police presence, so there will be no more clashes between police and civilians,” he told Iranian news outlet Enghelabe Eslami.
Some facial recognition used in Iran today comes from Chinese camera and artificial intelligence company Tiandy. His dealings in Iran were covered in a December 2021 report from IPVM, a firm that tracks the surveillance and security industry.
Tiandy is one of the largest security camera manufacturers in the world, but sales are largely in China, says author Charles Rollet, and the company seemed to jump at the opportunity to expand into Iran. IPVM found that Tiandy Iran’s website once listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the police and a government prison labor organization as clients — agencies Rollet describes as “the kind of places that raise red flags from a sanctions or human rights perspective.”
In December, the US Department of Commerce imposed sanctions on Tiandy, citing his role in the suppression of Uyghur Muslims in China and the provision of technology from the US to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The company previously used components from Intel, but the American chipmaker told NBC last month that it had ceased working with the Chinese company. Tiandy did not respond to a request for comment.
Exports from China have contributed to a rapid recent spread of surveillance technology. When Steven Feldstein, a former US State Department surveillance expert, surveyed 179 countries between 2012 and 2020, he found that 77 are now using some form of AI-driven surveillance. Facial recognition is used in 61 countries, more than any other form of digital surveillance technology, he says.
In his recent book The era of digital repressionFeldstein argues that authoritarian countries have largely succeeded in countering the momentum of protest movements via the internet. “They have adapted and are using new tools to strengthen their grip on power,” Feldstein writes.
Despite the deployment of repressive technology and mass surveillance, both China and Iran have witnessed some of the largest protests either country has seen in decades over the past month.
After a person dies, the Shia Muslim invokes the custom of observing chehelom, a day to remember the dead 40 days after they pass away. That tradition is now fueling protests in Iran as the commemoration of each of the more than 500 people who have died since Masha Amini’s death sparks new waves of outrage.
A cycle of chehelom following the killing of hundreds of people by government forces led the Iranian people to overthrow the Shah in 1979. Alimardani of Oxford expects the cycle of current protests – which she characterizes as the largest and most diverse since the revolution – to continue, with young people and women taking the lead.
