NEC creates division to formulate and apply human rights strategy to AI and biometrics business

NEC has established a Digital Trust Business Strategy Division as a dedicated organization to create and promote a strategy of Human Rights by Design (HRbD), which can be applied to the adoption of artificial intelligence and biometrics to ensure a positive impact on human rights, such as privacy.

HRbD is a concept of expanding the idea of Privacy by Design to all human rights, and to incorporate respect for rights into each step in the value chain. The new organization is staffed by experts in legal system, ethics, and technology, and that staff will be augmented by an additional “External Expert Council” which includes a range of stakeholders.

The four specific goals of the Digital Trust Business Strategy Division are to create and promote strategy for data distribution and product and solution planning based on HRbD, creating and managing company policies and rules based on HRbD, establishing consensus through dialogue, and improving the HRbD literacy of various stakeholders, including employees and customers.

“NEC is promoting a social solutions business that utilizes cutting-edge AI technologies, NEC the WISE, IoT technologies and biometric identification, Bio-Idiom, based on iris, face, fingerprint/palm print, finger vein, voice and optoacoustic information. In our Mid-term Management Plan 2020, the safety business is positioned as a global growth engine. The newly established organization plays an important role in the implementation of this growing business,” said NEC Corporation Senior Vice President Hiroshi Suzuki.

“Further, as a guide for promoting business originating from social issues, in July, NEC determined nine themes on which the management should work from an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) viewpoint. One of the themes, privacy with consideration for social acceptability, will be promoted mainly by the new organization.”

NEC established a Data Distribution Strategy Office in 2017 to deal with the implications of utilizing personal data, including consideration for GDPR.

NEC VP of Federal Operation Benji Hutchinson recently told Biometric Update that the next 24 months are critical in the deployment of and debate around the deployment of facial recognition technology in public spaces like sporting events and amusement parks.

Article Topics

artificial intelligence  |  biometrics  |  ethics  |  NEC  |  privacy by design  |  standards