Egyptian MP Seeks Safeguards for Facial Verification in SIM Registration

Egyptian lawmaker Amira al-Adly has called for clearer legal and institutional safeguards around plans to use facial recognition when registering mobile phone lines.

Adly, a member of the House of Representatives, asked authorities to explain why biometric data will be collected, how it will be protected and which public bodies will oversee the system. She raised the questions during a Sunday phone interview with the television program Kalema Akhera.

The proposed verification measure is intended to address mobile lines being registered or used by people other than their legal owners. Adly questioned whether facial checks would remain limited to that problem or form part of a broader state digital identity program.

She characterized biometric information as sensitive data with national security implications and pointed to Egypt’s Personal Data Protection Law, which provides for the creation of a specialized data protection center. In her view, any system handling face data should operate under a defined framework covering collection, storage, use, access and security.

Adly also argued that authorities should address practices that allow employees or intermediaries to misuse identity cards when registering mobile lines. She said the response should target the source of fraudulent registrations rather than expand biometric collection without corresponding governance controls.

The debate places Egypt within a wider move to connect telecommunications accounts with authoritative identity records. Mexico has linked mobile registration to CURP, its national population identifier, through rules that ID Tech examined when the country set its SIM registration framework.

India has taken a more explicitly biometric route, requiring Aadhaar authentication for new SIM cards. Such programs are intended to reduce anonymous or fraudulently registered lines, but they also create governance questions because a mobile account becomes connected to a persistent national identity record.

Adly called for a sovereign entity to supervise the Egyptian system and for authorities to identify which organizations would be permitted to access the resulting data. She framed transparency and strong protection controls as necessary for public trust in the country’s digital transformation.

Adly asked the government to establish the system’s legal basis, supervisory authority and access controls before facial verification expands across mobile subscribers.

Sources: Egypt Independent

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team