Facial Recognition Launches for Evangelical Churches in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Between October 17th and 20th, 2019, the Anhembi Exhibition Center, in the northern zone of São Paulo, hosted the 15th ExpoCristã – the largest event aimed at the Christian public in Latin America.

Among gospel music shows, virtual simulations of biblical episodes and stands of evangelical publishers, two companies stood out with products in the area of technology.

With the slogan “change the way you operate your church,” Kuzzma, a foreign artificial intelligence company, launched its facial recognition service aimed at churches in Brazil.

In a luxurious stand, associated resellers presented the technology to interested pastors. The company’s CEO, Marcelo Scharan, also gave a lecture entitled “Personalization, data and church” on the first day of the event.

The facial recognition service was also being sold by the Brazilian ‘Igreja Mobile’ (“Mobile Church”) during the event. “Nowadays who doesn’t want to have control of their environment? Of who comes in and who leaves? In the churches, we saw that they really wanted to know that and that’s why we brought this technology”, explains Luís Henrique Sabatine, the company’s development director, who also offers live transmission of religious services and events.

According to Kuzzma’s website, facial recognition works from a high-resolution panoramic camera installed in churches, identifying personal information and attendance of the faithful to services. From this, reports are generated for each person, including statistics on their behavior and even warning in cases of activity considered abnormal.

“Data such as sex, age, frequency, time of arrival, probable reasons for the delay and many other factors are analyzed and presented in reports. We were even able to determine in our metrics whether anyone needs a pastoral visit,” said the company’s CEO in an interview with ExpoCristã.

Company representatives, however, did not want to give an interview in order to clarify the doubts in the service. “Kuzzma chose not to speak publicly about the subject because it is a delicate issue,” said by e-mail the salesman Rafael Melo.

The company began offering facial recognition in Brazil in October and did not disclose its customers or partnerships. According to the website in English, the price of the service varies according to the number of events in which it will be used and the number of cameras, starting with a monthly fee of US$200 for one event per week with a camera installed.

In Brazil, the company is represented by Marcelo Scharan Augusto, partner of the electric material company Eletrica Stillo Ltda., and Pier Cloud Consultoria Eireli, an internet hosting service and data provider.

Kuzzma’s foreign representation cannot be found, and its website is not registered in any country’s domain. The address https://54.85.50.60 takes the user to the company’s website, without contact information.

Similarly, its competitor has been offering facial recognition services for Christian events for about a year. The Mobile Church uses software from TecVoz, an electronic security company, but with specifics focused on the churches’ needs.

A common camera captures the images and sends them to a computer capable of recognizing faces and further details about these people. “We manage to define user’s attendance, people count, user’s mood if they are happy if they are sad, if they are distressed, if they are afraid. We were able to define all this”, explains the development director, Luís Henrique Sabatine.

Mobile Church offers reports on the number of people present, gender, average age of the members, attendance and feeling analysis, as published on the website itself. The package prices vary and are not disclosed by the company.

According to Sabatine, about 40 percent of Mobile Church customers – 160 churches – use the facial recognition service. The remainder use only live transmission of services offered by the company, which did not want to name its customers.

Mobile Church belongs to Flávio Carrer Domingues and Rita Cardamone and was founded in late 2018 with the live broadcast service for churches. In early 2019 they began offering facial recognition. According to the company’s development director, “the differential point is the [Christian] niche, really.”

Carrer and Cardamone are evangelical. Rita is the regional director of Jethro International, an American college of chaplaincy and spiritual intelligence, in Recreio, a neighborhood in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro, as well as a partner in a company that sells courses. Flavio is a partner at Carrer and Dom Segurança Eletrônica e Automação (“Electronic Security and Automation”).

Vigilant Churches

The Igreja Evangélica Projeto Recomeçar (“New Beginning Evangelical Church”), located in the neighborhood of Xerém, in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro, is one of Mobile Church’s clients. The pastor in charge, Cláudio Duarte, made a video promoting the company on social media.

“The Mobile Church is a product that will allow your message to reach places you would never have imagined,” he says.

According to Sabatine, it was the pastor himself who brought the demand for facial recognition technology. “In the conversations and exchanges of ideas, he [pastor Cláudio Duarte] brought up this subject and we liked it a lot and implemented it,” he says.

The “New Beginning” Project has been using technology since the early part of 2019 and is one of the first clients to evaluate the service positively. “We use [facial recognition] to give greater assistance to members who are not coming to services,” says Caio Duarte, in charge of the church’s IT area.

In São Paulo, the Igreja da Restauração (“Restoration Church”), in the northern part of the city, has recently started to use the technology for attendance monitoring. “We know on average how many people come in each weekly service. For us it is very important to have this feedback,” says Sabrina Marciano, from the church’s communication department.

Other Mobile Church customers said they do not use facial recognition, but are interested in implementing it soon. This is the case of the evangelical community Estrela da Manhã (“Morning Star”), which for now only broadcasts live.

“The work they presented is a very helpful one because you can know how many members are [in the service], how many times a member came to church, how many times a member didn’t come. This helps a lot with the church’s message. And also to be able to get the member to grant a tithe,” says Lilian Ietto, representative of the Morning Star.

Collection without consent

According to the development director of the Mobile Church, the facial recognition technology offered needs to be fed with data from the faithful, such as name and photo, in order to be able to generate individual reports for each one.

Upon registration, the faithful sign a term consenting to the use of the data by the church. “We contact the members, they record their faces in our software and sign the document saying that the church can use their image for facial recognition, because Mobile Church does not keep the database. It is kept by the client,” he explains.

However, neither the Restoration Church nor the New Beginnings Project have signed a data use agreement with the faithful. “We announced it in the services, but no subscriptions,” admits Sabrina Marciano, justifying that the church is being reformed and that later this will be implemented.

The reporter asked for access to the mentioned contract, but Mobile Church chose not to share it.

For the IT technician of the New Beginnings project, the consent of the faithful is expressed at the time they register with a photo in the Mobile Church software. “I believe this is in itself a document that they accept.”

Joana Varon, director of the Coding Rights organization, explains that this type of consent is not enough. In her opinion, the faithful who already attend the church may feel coerced into accepting the terms if they wish to continue attending the services.

“Will people stop going to worship? Do they have this option if they are already part of the church? It is necessary to be in a position where their consent or otherwise will not limit their access,” she argues.

In addition, Joana recalls that biometric information, such as facial recognition, is considered “sensitive” by the General Law on Personal Data Protection (LGPDP). Also worthy of special attention under Brazilian law are data related to religious conviction or affiliation with a religious organization.

The LGPDP, or Law No. 13.709/2018, determines that sensitive personal data may only be used “when holders or their legal guardians so consent, specifically and emphatically, for specific purposes”, or in extreme cases such as the fulfillment of legal obligations.

Thus, non-formal consent, such as those mentioned by churches, is not sufficient. “We have to know the purpose for collecting all these data very clearly,” explains Joana.

Foreign inspiration

Facial recognition of the faithful is not exclusive to Brazil. In 2015, a company specialized in this technology called Face-Six, based in Israel and Las Vegas, USA, created a specialized software for churches: ChurchIX.

The company was founded by Moshe Greenshpan and the technology has already been installed in more than 200 churches worldwide. ChurchIX has not yet come to Brazil, but not for lack of interest.

“We have a great interest in Brazil, but we had obstacles with the service price. Now, we are offering a more cost-effective solution that can solve this issue,” he said in a statement.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Greenshpan said that technology can be useful for churches to better control their audience and impact, as well as achieve financial returns. “If churches see that a member often goes to worship, they will feel more comfortable calling him and asking for donations.”

According to the company, ChurchIX is very similar to the software used for security purposes, but it has special tools to monitor the attendance of the faithful. The technology can be applied to any camera but works better with high-resolution images.

Also, a previous database is not required for facial recognition to be done. The software recognizes repeated faces and creates users even without knowing the person’s name, which can be included by the church later.

Face-Six even concedes that in most cases facial recognition is performed without the consent of the faithful.

Source: El Pais

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