LeaveHomeSafe To Lose Facial Recognition Tool: Govt

The government says an update will be issued to its LeaveHomeSafe Covid app to remove a facial recognition function that it never asked for.

On Tuesday, the FactWire news agency revealed that the Android version of the app has a facial recognition tool, and this was later confirmed by the government's IT arm.

On Wednesday, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer Tony Wong told a Commercial Radio programme that the iPhone version of the app probably also has the facial recognition function, but the feature had not been requested and it has not been activated.

Wong said he found it strange that LeaveHomeSafe has this feature and the contractor involved has told his office that the function was bundled with a readily available module they adopted for the app.

"We have asked the contractor to check the codes in the module thoroughly to find out and remove functions that are not needed," he said.

"However, since there are some seven million people using the app every day, we shouldn't affect the normal operation of the mobile app as we remove the function."

Wong said the update to remove the app's facial recognition capability will be issued soon, to allay public concerns.