Tokyo set to deploy facial recognition
TOKYO: Hundreds of thousands of Tokyo 2020 athletes, staff and reporters will be scanned by cutting-edge facial recognition technology in an Olympic Games first, organisers said yesterday.
About 300,000 athletes, staff members, volunteers and reporters will be required to use their ID card and be verified with the facial recognition system to access venues.
The security overhaul will prevent fraudulent entry by people borrowing, stealing or faking an ID card, said electronics giant NEC, which developed the technology.
It will be rolled out across all facilities — including the 43 competition venues, athlete lodgings and media centres — but would not be used for spectators, organisers said.
“It is the first time facial recognition will be deployed for all people involved in the Olympics at all venues,” Olympic security chief Tsuyoshi Iwashita told reporters.
“Higher security is needed for people involved in Olympics as they enter important areas. They also go in and out of venues so we decided to introduce the system for smooth entry,” he added.
This will be especially practical for the Tokyo Olympics as the venues are scattered widely around the massive Japanese capital, Iwashita added.
The technology takes only 0.3 seconds to match up a face with a pre-registered photo, said Masaaki Suganuma, an official at NEC, which claims this is the world’s fastest such system.
In an experiment conducted last year, access using an ID card and facial recognition was 2.5 times faster than using barcodes and visual checks as at previous Olympics.
Meanwhile, the chief organiser of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics appealed yesterday for Japan to introduce daylight saving time to reduce the effect of the extreme summer heat on athletes and spectators. “I want them to use the Olympics as a way to give a maximum push for the project,” said former prime minister Yoshiro Mori after meeting current Premier Shinzo Abe.
Japan is currently sweating through a deadly heatwave that has seen the mercury top 40 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country and sparked fears over the wellbeing of participants at the 2020 Games. Abe responded by urging members of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party to consider the plan, according to Toshiaki Endo, a former Olympic minister.