Key Official: Facial Recognition Can Identify Unveiled Iranian Women on the Subway

The secretary of Iran’s Headquarters for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice has confirmed that proposals are on the table to use subway cameras to track and identify women wearing “bad hijab”.

Mohammad Saleh Golpaygani said in an interview released on Tuesday that as part of the regime’s so-called “Hijab and Chastity Project”, CCTV cameras on the Tehran Metro and subway systems in other cities may be used to take photos of women and girls not observing the regime-specified mandatory veil.

These people, he said, could then be tracked by using (unspecified) “technology” to match the image of their face to that on their national ID cards.

No official in any sector of Iranian public services has raised the prospect of facial recognition and matching technology before. It is unknown whether this would be a first for Iran under the Islamic Republic, or if such a system has been trialled before.

Golpayegani had previously complained that “the rate of women unveiling in the country now stands at 50 percent” and as such, going without or partially veiled would be considered “a violation” punishable by a fine at the very least.

Since mid-summer 2022 the almost all-male Iranian government and security agencies have embarked on a new campaign of pressure on Iranian women whose clothing and lifestyle choices do not match their and clerics' prescription.

The past two months have seen an increased deployment of “morality patrols” to the streets of major cities and violent arrests of those who opt not to cover their hair.

At least four of the latter, including the artist and editor Sepideh Rashnu, were paraded on state TV swathed in full hijab shortly after being detained and taken to unknown locations. Rashnu was held incommunicado for around two weeks and forced to confess on camera to “encouraging prostitution”. She was released on Tuesday of an 800-toman bail.