The following report is by Biometric Update:
The nations are Afghanistan and China, and a weirder pair of biometrics allies is hard to find. They share a short mountain border and not much else.
Afghanistan roots out any religion except Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism. Its government is a buyer of facial recognition systems deployed to purify the culture.
China’s autocratic and opposition-phobic leaders would like to end religious thought and practice altogether, especially that of the nation’s large Muslim Uyghur community. China has become the world’s biggest player in biometric surveillance by perfecting blanket monitoring and oppression of the Uyghurs.
This week, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Interior Minister reportedly said “the analysts” are preparing to survey the nation’s biometrics security situation as a first step to letting contracts.
TOLOnews, a nominally independent news publisher based in Kabul, quotes to the spokesman saying 65,000 cameras already have been installed since 2021, all without a single signed contract with any country.
It is unclear if facial recognition plays a part in the present infrastructure.
The not-insignificant network reportedly has had no impact on preventing crime, but it has helped arrest an undisclosed number of suspects.
There are discrepancies in the spokesman’s account (one of which is brought up in the TOLOnews article).
According to New York-based The China Project, a news and business-services company, Uyghurs who fled to Afghanistan during China’s Cultural Revolution report fearing the sight of Huawei cameras in their adopted home country.
China Project says facial recognition powerhouse Huawei and the Taliban, the ruling religious fundamentalists, signed a contract in August for hardware and facial recognition software.
It is unknown if Huawei phones are part of the rumored deal, but if they are, China Project says “compulsory” software in them could completely open the devices to the government.
Afghanistan is desperately poor despite what might be the richest and most varied minerals and metals in its mountains. And it is virtually untapped. Leases to Chinese government officials and businesses would pay for a dense camera-and-telecommunications network.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
If this technology is being used to hunt down Muslims right now, give it a little more time and this oppressive persecution will be used across the world to hunt down truly born again Christians and Jews, both before and during the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30).
SEE: China’s New Surveillance System That Track Emotions And Linked With ‘Social Credit’
[11] Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me. [12] Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. 2 Timothy 3:11-12
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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How does facial recognition expose internal beliefs?