Facial Recognition

Category: When Analytics Works

Facial recognition is a technology that carries with it a whole class of ethical objections and concerns.

There is a direct bearing on anonymity, as apps like Clearview make clear. "What if a stranger could snap your picture on the sidewalk then use an app to quickly discover your name, address and other details? A startup called Clearview AI has made that possible." (Moyer, 2020) Clearview is one of a number of applications that are using publicly available image data to identify people. "Technically, it scrapped(sic) off billions of images from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo, and other sites to utilize it as its own database. And, when there's match for your face, it becomes easy to get your information." (Das, 2020)

Mark Andrejevic & Neil Selwyn (2019) outline a number of additional ethical concerns involving facial recognition technology in schools:The dehumanising nature of facially focused schoolingThe foregrounding of students' gender and raceThe inescapable nature of school-based facial recognitionThe elimination of obscurityThe increased authoritarian nature of schoolingThe cascading logic of automation (ie., it gets used for more and more things)The future oppression of marginalised groups within schools

Additionally, as Microsoft's Michael Karimian noted, "technology companies are now being forced to take on much greater responsibilities, such as considering how facial recognition software might infringe on the right to assembly in certain countries. This highlighted the indirect social impact of AI systems and the affect(sic) this might have on Children (UNICEF, 2019).

There have been campaigns to ban facial recognition (Conger, et.al. 2019; Samuel, 2019). Arguably, however, these efforts miss the point. It's just one identification technology among many. "People can be identified at a distance by their heart beat or by their gait, using a laser-based system. Cameras are so good that they can read fingerprints and iris patterns from meters away. And even without any of these technologies, we can always be identified because our smartphones broadcast unique numbers called MAC addresses" (Schneier, 2020).

Examples and Articles

Clearview app lets strangers find your name, info with snap of a photo, report says
"What if a stranger could snap your picture on the sidewalk then use an app to quickly discover your name, address and other details? A startup called Clearview AI has made that possible, and its app is currently being used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the US, including the FBI, says a Saturday report in The New York Times." Moyer, 2020. Direct Link

Draft privacy guidance of facial recognition for police agencies
Not so much an example of facial recognition software, this is a link to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada that in June 2021 drafted guidance for the use of facial recognition for police agencies. Of interest is their attempt to contextualize when the use of facial recognition is acceptable. Direct Link

Facebook Shuts Down Its Facial Recognition System â€œFor The Good Of Societyâ€
"The many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole. There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use." Review Geek, Andrew Heinzman, Nov 2, 2021 Direct Link

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