After Mahsa Amini, who was detained in Iran on September 16, 2022 and died suspiciously because of the headscarf, the Iranian government and the public came face to face, many people were imprisoned, executed, and nationwide bans began. Although the internet and social media were banned nationwide, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites and Proxy support for WhatsApp relieved the citizens of Iran to some extent.
A proposal submitted to Iran’s legislative body, the Islamic Shura Council in the past months, attracted a lot of attention. The proposal went into effect recently.
They will detect those who do not wear headscarves with facial recognition systems.
Since 2015, the Iranian government has spent millions of dollars improving the country’s security and monitoring systems. These investments included biometric photos, chip IDs, facial recognition systems and many more digital security measures. Although many of these investments were developed to protect the country from foreign powers, after a while these systems began to target local people as well. For example, the government sent SMS to women who did not wear the hijab correctly according to its rules, on how to wear the correct hijab.
On top of all this, the approval of the law last August, which caused women who did not wear the headscarf correctly to lose their rights in banks, public transportation and public institutions, triggered these events. After the events, a proposal was made to the Islamic Council to “detect women who do not wear headscarves by the face recognition systems that have been installed”, but the proposal was not accepted.
Recently, this proposal was accepted as law. This system, which was previously only used to detect women who drive, will now be used to detect women who do not wear a headscarf or who wear it incorrectly. According to the law, women who wear the headscarf incorrectly will be warned and fined, but more severe sanctions will be applied to women who do not wear the headscarf.
With this law, Iran officially became the third country after China and the USA (only in some states) to monitor its citizens 24/7 with artificial intelligence-supported facial recognition systems.
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