Seoul shares face biometrics of 170M travelers with private firms

The South Korean government shared roughly 170 million face images of citizens and resident foreign nationals with the private sector without their consent to be used in training and testing biometric algorithms, according to a recent Ministry of Justice document. The move is part of an "AI identification and tracking system development project" based on a memorandum of understanding between the Korean Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT). Scheduled for completion in 2022, the project has seen the MOJ transferring information obtained during the immigration screening process to the MSIT, including face biometrics, nationality, gender, and age. The MSIT subsequently transferred that information to private businesses for the purpose of artificial intelligence technology research, according to the allegations. The South Korean government mentioned the creation of the project in a press release when it first launched in 2019 but did not disclose information about its structure, scope, or data collection methods.