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The Hong Kong authorities has admitted that the LeaveHomeSafe contact tracing app comes with a facial recognition perform, however pressured that the characteristic has by no means been used.
Officers stated an replace will probably be issued to the COVID-19 tracing app to take away the characteristic.
This comes after Hong Kong-based information company FactWire uncovered a facial detection characteristic within the supply code of the Android model of the app in a report on Tuesday.
Supply code is the underlying set of laptop directions used to create a program or piece of software program.
In a cellphone interview with Industrial Radio on Wednesday, Deputy Authorities Chief Info Officer Tony Wong stated the iOS model of the app in all probability additionally has the facial recognition perform, however insisted that authorities didn’t request such a characteristic to be included nor has it ever been activated.
“After receiving the [media] question, we instantly adopted up with the contractor answerable for the event and upkeep of the app. We discovered it unusual why there are codes that we didn’t request for in [the app],” he stated.
Wong defined that available modules are used for the event of most apps and the modules include totally different features.
For the LeaveHomeSafe app, he stated that modules associated to the cameras of smartphones are used in an effort to carry out scanning processes, resembling for QR codes of venues and digital vaccination data.
Wong stated the builders solely activated such features, however not others, such because the facial recognition characteristic.
He added that the federal government has advised the builders to take away features that aren’t wanted in all variations of the app, together with the facial recognition characteristic, and can concern an replace.
“However we are going to do that in a means that doesn’t have an effect on how the app operates each day as now we have round 7 million residents utilizing it every single day,” Wong stated.
As for why authorities didn’t notice this earlier, Wong stated that that they had engaged unbiased third events to conduct privateness impression and safety danger assessments however they won’t have checked unactivated elements of the supply code.
The LeaveHomeSafe app was launched in 2020 as a part of the federal government’s COVID-19 contact tracing efforts.
Regardless of the authorities’ reassurances that the app doesn’t pose any safety dangers, some members of the general public have raised considerations about knowledge privateness.
Some have opted to download a fake LeaveHomeSafe app, which has since been deemed unlawful; use a second smartphone solely for the app; or keep away from going to venues requiring the app altogether.
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