Facial Recognition Software For Safety Or Control?
Police agencies worldwide have been increasingly turning toward experimenting with and embracing facial recognition technology. From China to the US, across the UK and elsewhere, we can see that police are using facial recognition as a powerful tracking tool.
Along with the growing prevalence for this technology being used by various law enforcement agencies it has also fueled concern with many, namely liberty and privacy advocates among others. There are worries about mistakes being made or the technology being used abusively and caution is being urged from tech firms along with civil rights advocates.
There are some tech executives who have taken it so far as to publicly pledge and call for an end to the selling of their facial recognition products to any police departments.
In an open letter one Amazon employee wrote:
"We know from history that new and powerful surveillance tools left unchecked in the hands of the state have been used to target people who have done nothing wrong."
Around the UK there are a variety of police departments that are turning toward using facial recognition software to help them conduct tasks such as tracking suspects or helping to look for missing persons. They are still in their trial stages and we can expect to see their use of this technology continue to grow in the years to come.
However, critics have reminded the public that there is still time of them to push-back against such a future, advocating for an alternative where facial recognition tools won't be directed at them from the state.
At the beginning of December 2018, the UK data commissioner launched a formal investigation to look into the use of facial recognition technology by the police. The investigation came after there had allegedly been significant concerns expressed over the legality of the scheme and the effectiveness of the technology overall. There is an overwhelming lack of transparency surrounding the use of this technology by various authority figures worldwide. It isn't unreasonable to anticipate that this technology might be unjustly used by the state to harm the public.
An earlier report from May of 2018 concluded that the facial recognition technology was an unbelievable failure in that it had wrongfully identified someone 9 times out of 10.
If the system is going to be wrong more than 90 percent of the time then it poses a danger more than any benefit by using such a system.
As long as there seem to be a generous lack of safeguards and oversight surrounding this technology and the use of it, there will be repeated calls of caution from critics that this trend could easily pose a threat to the freedom and well-being of millions. Despite the seeming risk of failure that comes along with using the technology, police have continued to defend the use and insist that it's helping them to catch criminals.
The Metropolitan Police have conducted at least 10 different trials experimenting with the technology and afterward a full evaluation is expected to be completed.
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Given any new technology, it is inevitable that governments will insist it be used for their benefit without question or resistance from us mundanes. Governments will also insist that any new technology in our hands is an existential threat to society, because... reasons.
Powerful tools like facial recognition can be used for both good and bad purposes. We must be cautious and think ahead.
give me only one good purpose...
@mondoshawan
Facial recognition can be used in many beneficial ways.
....etc.
With all my due respect. I still can not see one good purpose... all points listed are tools with the only purpose to control "slaves". And who is the one making a decision for who is a "bad" person, sorry all this does not line up with TruthTruth...
@mondoshawan we each have our own perspectives. All good. Freedom of thought is important. We don't have to agree. I enjoy the civil conversation and learning other people's perspectives.
Good. In your business you have to be conditioned to this I understand too... No judgement at all, for me it's important to understand the meaning of the words used, the proper use of language to consciously get what comes within the communication... Communicating to understand and not to answer!
Everyone is said to have a twin.
This really seems to be the case.
So, any large enough facial database would mismatch everyone, even if the facial recognition was flawless.
And, they aren't flawless.
And, this isn't about privacy. Most good people do not really care about privacy. This is about the govern-cement being intrusive into everyone's lives.
Cameras everywhere are good, if we are catching purse snatchers, rapists and thugs.
However, cameras are used to give people "red light" tickets, spitting tickets, jaywalking tickets.
So the cameras aren't bad, the govern-cement dogs are bad.
And, so we resist by saying, we have a right to privacy.
The Corbett Report did a piece on
4 Ways The Crime Lab Can Frame You
These facial recognition is just another excuse to cuff you and process you.
the twin story reminds me of that jet li movie.. the one? have you seen it?
Probably not, i haven't seen any movies in a long time. But, i think i know which one you are speaking of.
More apropos, in recent times, there is a guy who has been (falsely) arrested three times because he looks like a guy the police are looking for. (identified by computer match)
it's a really old one so you might have lol