⁍ New York-based Human Rights Watch said Buenos Aires started using the technology in 2019.

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⁍ No minors are known to have been arrested yet.

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⁍ The group says the methodology is riddled with misidentifications that could unjustly limit job and educational opportunities for kids wrongly accused of theft and other crimes.

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– Argentina is the only country in the world using facial recognition technology to identify people under the age of 18, according to Human Rights Watch, which says the program is “riddled with misidentifications” that could limit job and educational opportunities for kids wrongly accused of crimes. Buenos Aires started using the facial recognition technology in 2019 and no minors have been arrested yet, but HRW says the methodology is riddled with misidentifications that could unjustly limit job and educational opportunities for kids wrongly accused of theft and other crimes, Reuters reports. “Kids accused of having committed a crime are having their personal information published online, which is against international law and national standards,” child rights researcher Hye Jung Han says. “Anyone with an internet connection can download that data.” HRW says the facial recognition technology was built by a Russian company and contracted out locally. “We are asking the government to remove all children from its public criminal database, suspend its facial recognition system, and release verifiable statistics about its performance to date,” Han says. “People’s rights and privacy are being violated by a government that doesn’t understand this technology very well, without safeguards and without public debate.”