“Apple Inc. supplier Pegatron Corp. began using facial recognition technology this year to screen applicants for its iPhone plant, illustrating how some companies are guarding against the growing problem of underage workers making their way into factories in China,” Eva Dou reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Taiwan-based Pegatron, the primary manufacturer of the iPhone 5C, for the first time gave a detailed description of the system it uses to filter tens of thousands of workers for its assembly lines in Shanghai,” Dou reports. “Pegatron said applicants for its assembly line have their government-issued IDs checked for authenticity. Their faces are then matched to their ID photos through facial recognition technology, to weed out those using borrowed ID cards. Their names are also checked against police records.”
“In theory, these measures should keep out underage workers, as they should catch people using fake or borrowed IDs,” Dou reports. “Underage labor has long been a problem at China’s factories. The spotlight has been trained closely on manufacturers making products for Apple, the world’s most valuable company.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Not sure how facial recognition would help to filter younger people since many Asians, before showing any signs of aging, usually have very smooth skin for decades.
It’s to match the person’s face to the ID card photo, to make sure it’s not a borrowed card.
So they have a database of photo IDs to compare? Then it makes sense. Somehow I could not grasp it.
Problem is most of the fake IDs are from siblings, who generally can look very similar, for obvious reasons.
China had a one child policy so maybe not so many siblings.
What, no Pegatron pic…?
While they are trying to spin this as “see, we are trig prevent underage workers,” the real reason for facial recognition is more likely for security, keeping secrets and preventing theft.
Now it they had a facial recognition that could accurately determine someone’s age, THAT would be impressive!
Perhaps they should hire one of those carnies that can guess your age. 😉
Ain’t gonna work; they all look alike.