Singapore is the first country in the world to use facial verification in its national identification system

No country has taken such a step, and Singapore, which is an island city-state with fewer than 6 million people, has dared to do so. Perhaps the fact that there are few people makes it easier to take technologically advanced decisions.

Singapore has long positioned itself in support of new technologies to help its economic and social development, and they believe that facial verification can help them to facilitate their administration.

The first thing we have to take into account is the difference between facial recognition and facial verification.

In facial recognition, a camera detects the image of a person without their knowledge, and sends the information to whom it may concern. And this has serious implications for people’s privacy.

Facial verification makes a device (which can be our own mobile) capture our image to verify that we are the ones who interact to perform a certain action. In this case there are no privacy problems since we are aware of this exchange of information and we consent to it.

The Singapore authorities want that with this information on the image of its citizens, they can contact their administration to take the necessary steps. It is a new tool that is used to facilitate that contact.

There are different companies around the world that offer this technology and it is in use for various applications such as passenger boarding at some airports, and several others.

Singapore has opted for an English company called iProov well known in this field to implement this technology in the access of its citizens with the administration.

In this way the inhabitants of Singapore ( singaporeans) will use their image to access in an easier way to the different services of their government.

And as is logical, most of the companies on that island will be assuming this same technology to interconnect with each other and with their government. All of which will improve and facilitate their communications.

In the world in which we move, the speed and simplicity of communications is vital to speed up the lives of people and businesses.

From what I see, those responsible for Singapore are clear that they want to continue at the cutting edge of technology, and that will surely do them well to improve their future.