About Bans on Face Recognition Technology
This year, Oakland and San Francisco, California, and Somerville, Massachusetts, all banned the government’s use of facial recognition technology and others are ‘pausing’ its use. This decision is being talked about a lot and it’s easy to see why. The technology has been growing in popularity in recent years and San Francisco was the first major US city to block its use. Silicon Valley tends to be an enthusiastic adopter of new technology, so the move surprised some, but face recognition technology has been plagued with accusations of racial bias and low accuracy in addition to the “Black Mirror”-esque introduction of mass surveillance into our society.
So what do we think of all this at Blink Identity?
We think it’s great. Mass surveillance of crowds of people without probable cause feels wrong and it’s obvious to most people how it could be abused. To us, this isn’t about face recognition technology — any technology that is used for mass surveillance is wrong. People are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty and this seems like an unreasonable search. (Standard caveat — I am not a lawyer.) Use of face recognition technology should always be voluntary and opt-in.
When small GPS trackers first became available, the police started using them. In 2012 that practice was challenged in court. The police claimed that putting GPS trackers on cars wasn’t any different from following a car, which they are legally allowed to do. The courts said it was fine for them to follow one car, but that the GPS tracker technology allowed them to track ALL of the cars, which was unconstitutional search. The police now have to get a warrant to put a GPS tracker on a car. More recently, the Supreme Court ruled that police must obtain a valid search warrant before obtaining location data on a suspect from their cell phone.
We think the parallels are clear. Even with a warrant, there is no way to use face recognition on one specific person in a crowd without first tracking everyone and searching through them to find the person you are interested in. If you are using this technology in crowds, then you are photographing people without their knowledge, consent or probable cause.
It’s important to understand the difference between mass surveillance and a privacy preserving, voluntary and opt-in technology like Blink Identity. Technology currently exists that can collect iris images and identify people from at least six feet away (probably more). We already have technology that collect fingerprints from a considerable distance. It’s not about faces, it’s about tracking large numbers of people without their knowledge, consent and probable cause.
With the ban, people can still unlock their iPhones with their face and they can still participate in voluntary and transparent systems like Blink Identity.
Originally published at https://www.blinkidentity.com/forum on May 14, 2019.
