Hotels (and transit, and banks) in China have been doing this for a while now. If this is any similar, it would be some awkward police-sanctioned box with a webcam and RFID reader to first scan the person's ID card, and then make sure the person's face is the same as the photo on the ID. Note that a national ID has been strictly required for a long time already, and the general idea is to make sure nobody is borrowing someone else's ID to get service, something really easy to do given that Chinese IDs are like US Social Security numbers--easily stolen, sold for cheap, and not easily replaceable.<p>Debates on all the hairy facial recognition issues aside, the main concern has been one that existed for decades, that people are being de-anonymized as a matter of policy for trivial things like entering a friend's apartment block or using a vending machine. Facial recognition is an enabler for sure, but even if ML didn't exist at all, authorities could (and here, would) just require IDs and the logging of IDs for every trivial transaction.