As of September of 2003, public face recognition was a yet to know topic; It was lingering in the minds of app developers, investigator officers, private investigators, Facebook; but at the end of the day the government only "approved" or supported 3 stances.
* International airports in Boston, Providence, San Francisco and Fresno, Use face recognition as a security measure since the terrorist attacks in 2001.
* In the 2001 Super Bowl, Face recognition was used to identify and tag at least 19 suspects or potential criminals (but nobody turned out to be more than a traffic violator)
* In Ybor, Tampa. The police department used public sidewalks to spot criminals in the streets.
A study conducted by the Detroit Free Press found out that In most cases, face recognition cameras are used or programed by humans and their biases. Either they aim or pay closer attention to a specific race or they abuse it by stalking women, if the controllers are male and if there are any interest on political fields, there are different ways to intimidate opponents.
And now we have to worry about social networks being able to tag all of our pictures by face recognition? Or being able to find people by snapping a picture from your phone and just google them? Give me a break... what about the people who are in the witness protection programs?
How do we know their identities are still protected and they will have the peace of mind to walk around the mall or a sidewalk for that matter and live their "new" life?
The government MUST take a closer look to this issue. Before we know it it will be out of hand and it will create a crisis of identities. Not only for the ones who do not want to be found but also for the ones who want to pretend to be someone else.
Technology keeps advancing at a faster pace than our fingers can text now days. It is up to us to be in the loop and keep ourselves informed so we can take the proper measures.
http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/qa-face-recognition
http://www.news-geek.com/blog/face-recognition-technology-online-progress-vs-privacy/
I don't think government can do much about it. They can't control the development of technology, and if someone was intent on tracking down a person in the witness protection program, I don't think they would care that using facial recognition software was illegal.
ReplyDeleteThe genie is out of the box, and we have to learn how to live with it.