Week 3: Facial Recognition

Facial recognition technologies pose a major threat to our privacy. Like anything, there are legitimate uses, but the risks outweigh the benefits in this case. Facial recognition technologies are used by a many different companies and organizations including social media sites like Facebook, law enforcement agencies, and even governments. These technologies can be used to automatically identify people who are within sight of a compatible camera. All of this facial recognition data is stored digitally and often on the cloud. It’s worrying to think of whether the data is being stored securely or not. If data like this was to get into the wrong hands, the consequences could be catastrophic. But what about when it is used by the “right hands”? Mass surveillance efforts use facial recognition to track the activities and patterns of individuals. China’s social credit system relies heavily upon this. Faces of civilians are constantly scanned and their activities are assessed and they could receive consequences based upon their actions. No human intervention necessary. Most people likely would not be comfortable with this being brought to the US. Another concern is potential inaccuracies in the system. There are many documented errors made by facial recognition systems. Imagine if an innocent civilian was flagged and later punished by law enforcement just because they had a similar face to a criminal and were automatically flagged by a facial recognition system.

https://www.eff.org/pages/face-recognition