(Yicai Global) July 28 -- In view of the abuse of facial recognition technology by businesses, the Supreme People’s Court of China, the country’s top judicial authority, set some basic norms by issuing a judicial interpretation today.

The Beijing-based court clearly stipulated that the abuse of face scanning technology in various business and public places, including hotels, shopping malls, banks, stations, airports, sports stadiums, and recreational sites, is an infringement of rights.

Use of the technology in such places in violation of laws and administrative regulations to conduct face verification, identification or analysis should be defined as an infringement of a natural persons’ personality and interests, the court said at a press conference.

Regarding residential communities’ bringing in facial recognition systems as a household authentication method, Guo Feng, deputy director of the court’s Research Office, said that property management teams should lawfully gain consent from owners or users of properties before collecting and using facial data as such information is personal and sensitive.

Property management offices also cannot infringe on residents’ personality and interests in the name of intelligent management, Guo added.

Chen Longye, head of the civil affairs department of the court’s Research Office, told reporters that the handling of facial information should not be subject to any coercive factors. He was referring in particular to the acquisition of non-essential personal information by some mobile apps through a package of authorizations and bundling with other authorizations, for example, “no provision of services without clicking the ‘agree’ button.”

The court will not support such acts of forcing someone to consent to the processing of their facial information, Chen said.

In response to the collection of facial information about underage citizens, Guo said that information processors must obtain separate consent of guardians to process the facial information of minors. 

The illegal handling of minors’ facial data will draw severe punishment for such entities, with corresponding liabilities, to ensure that the data is specially protected in accordance with the law.

The Supreme People’s Court explained that facial information technology can be used in response to public health emergencies, or in emergency situations necessary to protect the life, health and property of natural persons.

It can also be deployed in public places as per relevant regulations to maintain public safety as well as for reasonable processing of information related to human faces under consent from the natural persons or their guardians, the court added.

Editor: Peter Thomas