Masks fooled facial recognition as staff skipped work on job

Staff at a neighbourhood committee in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang province, were caught clocking in with paper masks that fooled a facial recognition system. Chinese media reported the scheme was led by the committee secretary, a man surnamed Li, who organised colleagues to skip work while one or two people checked in. Printed cutouts of staff faces were held to the scanner, allowing a single worker to register attendance for the whole group as others handled personal business. The ruse collapsed after CCTV cameras above the scanner showed the same people clocking in repeatedly, sometimes wearing obvious paper faces. Neighbourhood committees are the lowest level of local governance in China. Members are not salaried civil servants but receive allowances linked to attendance. Online critics on Weibo called it corruption. One wrote, This is corruption. They should all be fired. Others mocked how modern AI lost to paper.