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A nationwide facial recognition ID program is underway in France, in spite of a lawsuit and the data regulator's protests about lack of consent, data security and privacy. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Learn more:

France is creating – and speeding up the rollout of – a nationwide program using facial recognition to create legal digital identities for its citizens.

The program is called Alicem – an acronym for “certified online authentification on mobile”. It was developed jointly by the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Title Agency (ANTS), which maintain that it’s going to a) simplify getting online services while b) fighting identity theft, c) keeping the biometric data safe on the phone, making it disappear after validating identity, and d) not letting third parties get at the data.

France had planned to launch the Android-only app by Christmas. But now, it’s greasing the wheels and plans to have it up and running in November 2019, Bloomberg reports.

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