China is developing a biometric database using face recognition that could identify any one of its 1.3 billion citizens within three seconds.The goal is for the system to able to match someone's face to their ID photo 90 per cent of the time, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.The project was launched by the Ministry of Public Security in 2015, is under development in conjunction with a security company based in Shanghai, according to SCMP.The daily reported that the 1.3 billion-person facial recognition system is being developed by Isvision, which told SCMP it had won the contract last year.The company declined to provide details.Isvision security cameras with facial recognition capabilities were first deployed in Tiananmen Square as early as 2003, according to the company's website. Similar systems are in place in Xinjiang and Tibet.The newspaper writes that the giant system can be connected to surveillance CCTV networks and will make use of cloud facilities to connect to data storage and processing centres distributed across the country, according to people familiar with the project.
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