Being a fan of Mexican soccer and attending a game now includes a requirement: reveal personal data and leave a face image. Basically, the intention to build a database of people who buy a ticket responds to the need to stop the violence in the stadiums; but the way of implementation can generate more problems.
The violence unleashed inside the Corregidora stadium in Querétaro forced the Liga MX to speed up its plan to credential the fans, because in addition to the fights, the resale has been another battle. Time is short and it joins the data collection system that the Mexican Soccer Federation (Femexfut) already did at the end of January, for the matches of the Mexican National Team at the Azteca Stadium. Of course, the reason is different: to detect the people of the homophobic cry, which has resulted in sanctions, fines and warning that FIFA can take points from the Tricolor.
Liga MX and Femexfut talk about their goals in creating a large database of Mexican fans, for purposes of Fan ID, credentialing and facial recognition systems, but it is necessary to dwell on how the information is processed and that it is in light of the authorities that ensure the application of the law that protects personal data.
“The highest administrative authority in the protection of personal data for the public sector at the federal level and for the private sector is the INAI. We have seen carefully and with legitimate concern the project that Femexfut and Liga MX propose in this regard. We understand the reasons for trying to make a list of constant or permanent fans. The problem is how and in this Femexfut, which has already done so, should approach INAI to get a comprehensive orientation of the project, I think it is very soon that Liga MX has now joined and it will be in the national territory”, explains to El Economista, the President Commissioner of INAI, Francisco Javier Acuña.
The National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) also watches over its objectives: “The protection of personal data is a human right, recognized in article 16 of the Constitution, which grants power to all natural person so that their personal data is processed lawfully and fairly, in order to guarantee their privacy and the right to informative self-determination, that is, to decide who can process their personal data and for what purposes”.
Mexican soccer intends to centralize fan data, which will be processed and protected by Femexfut’s technology systems.
_ Guarantee of a safe stadium?
“We are talking about a protocol (General Safety Manual of the Safe Stadium) that has to be reinforced. Really, with substance, what we need is to know who the fans are. With this new rule, we have the ability to not let people enter the stadium and whoever enters already knows how to behave because if they don’t, they won’t be able to buy tickets in the future,” the president of Liga MX, responds to this newspaper. Mikel Arriola.
_ Guarantee that there will be no cyber intrusion?
“Fortunately, the development of the technology is from Femexfut, proven, and we are going to use it hand in hand with people from Liga MX systems and club systems, to implement identification control. Every day we keep a lot of information on transactions and players in the country. We store information from the clubs, owners, and in that sense the information of the fans will be kept with the same importance, relevance and security that we normally operate. It is a challenge, because financial institutions of another nature have been affected, we are not exempt from the fact that tomorrow there may be some type of aggression at the system level, ”Yon de Luisa, head of Femexfut, immediately answers.