Turkey to establish presidential directorate for integrated surveillance

All security and traffic cameras will be integrated with ID card and driver’s licence data in a new directorate to be established under the Turkish presidency, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Wednesday.

The Directorate of Security and Emergency Coordination Centre will be operational “within a few months,” Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu told participants of an online technology fair in a livestream, Anadolu said.

“We are putting forth an extraordinary mechanism where we connect all locations, all cameras, security and traffic, which can then be referred to the Presidential Directorate,” Anadolu cited Soylu as saying.

Turkey’s new-generation ID cards, which have RFID chips in them, will be loaded with driver’s licence data starting Friday, the minister said. Banking, e-state and healthcare services will be also be integrated in the future into the system where the ID cards will have on them biometric data of citizens and residents, including finger prints.

Soylu said last year that Turkey was already (at least in some places) using technology which allowed the authorities to scan and match 100,000 photos of human faces within a second with images from public places https://t.co/KSeFjpN6FY

— Ayla Albayrak (@aylushka_a) September 17, 2020