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Beijing wants to use facial recognition to blacklist unruly tourists
Chinese tourists have a reputation for bad behavior and China’s capital is sick of it
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
In this week's news on China's widespread face recognition tech, Chinese authorities have found a new target in need of constant surveillance: Unruly tourists.
City park authorities in Beijing are considering installing facial recognition cameras in the city's travel hot spots and blacklisting bad-mannered tourists. Uncivilized tourists would be punished by restricting ticket purchases for museums, parks and other tourist spots, state media has reported.
The country has seen an overwhelming number of facial recognition systems deployed during the past couple of years ranging between convenient, Orwellian and mildly ridiculous. This one may belong to the first category.
Chinese tourists have earned a reputation for bad behavior abroad that includes fighting over makeup in a South Korean duty-free shop and harassing a Swiss swan.
Bad tourist behavior is equally irksome for people within China. The China National Tourism Administration started stricter monitoring in 2016 with nearly 700 people placed on a travel blacklist as of last year.
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