When you think about facial recognition technology and its applications, guessing the sexuality of individuals might not have been your first thought. Research at the Stanford University found that a system could learn to recognize facial characteristics of the different sexualities (The Economist, 2017). It doesn’t look very useful, but it does illustrate the significant progress that has been made in developing this technology. Because of these improvements there is now a wide variety of applications for the technology and therefore facial recognition becomes more and more important for collecting data. But when individuals become more easily traceable, privacy concerns can become a serious issue (Chapman, 2016). However, these objections are also present at other data collection technologies. So, is facial recognition a more serious threat to your privacy?
It is important to mention that facial recognition has many useful applications like tracking shoplifters, keeping an eye on supporters in a stadium and other security features (The Economist, 2017). The Chinese tech company Baidu wants to develop a system for picking up your rail tickets by showing your face (Knight, 2017). Apple adopted this technology to use it as a feature to unlock the new iPhone X and for payment methods and already has experience with other biometric technologies like fingerprint identification (Metz, 2017).
However, there is a big difference between facial recognition and other biometric verification methods: for facial recognition, there is nowhere to hide because it works from a distance. Unless you’re wearing a ski mask, facial recognition will notice your presence. This might sound like a serious breach of privacy, because it works anywhere without your permission. But it can be argued that although faces belong to individuals, they are available or visible to the public and therefore it’s not compromising your privacy rights (The Economist, 2017). Making the picture in a public area is allowed and the recognition of your face is an independent aspect of it.
So, the data can be very sensitive, but doesn’t differ from technologies like GPS-tracking of smartphones. Therefore, facial recognition isn’t a more problematic technology when we consider the privacy concerns. But it does seem more personal and therefore more sensitive, because it involves your face. So, facial recognition has a wide variety of applications and many have a promising future, but it does make it more important for the data to be safely and privately stored. For mobile payment smartphone makers argued that people do not leave their homes without a smartphone, but can forget their wallet. This argument is even stronger for your face.
References:
Chapman, C. (2017). Facial Recognition Technology Raises Privacy Concerns. NBC News, November 6th 2016. [online] Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/facial-recognition-technology-raises-privacy-concerns-n676836 [Accessed: September 27th 2017].
Knight, W. (2017). Paying with your face. MIT Technology Review. [online] Available at: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603494/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-paying-with-your-face/ [Accessed: September 27th 2017].
Metz, R. (2017). Facial Recognition Is Only the Beginning. MIT Technology Review, September 20th 2017. [online] Available at: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608879/facial-recognition-is-only-the-beginning-heres-what-to-expect-next-in-biometrics-on-your/ [Accessed: September 27th 2017].
The Economist (2017). Advances in AI are used to spot signs of sexuality. The Economist, September 9th 2017. [online] Available at: https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21728614-machines-read-faces-are-coming-advances-ai-are-used-spot-signs [Accessed: September 27th 2017].
The Economist (2017). What machines can tell from your face. The Economist, September 9th 2017. [online] Available at: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21728617-life-age-facial-recognition-what-machines-can-tell-your-face [Accessed: September 27th 2017].
