Medical News
Technology
| Analysis
23 May 2019
Who you looking at?Steffi Loos/Getty Images
By Chris Stokel-WalkerA growing backlash against face recognition suggests the technology has a reached a crucial tipping point, as battles over its use are erupting on numerous fronts.
Face-tracking cameras have been trialled in public by at least three UK police forces in the last four years. A court case against one force, South Wales Police, began earlier this week, backed by human rights group Liberty. Ed Bridges, an office worker from Cardiff whose image was captured during a test in 2017, says the technology is an unlawful violation of privacy, an accusation the police force denies.
Avoiding the camera’s gaze has got others in trouble. Earlier this month the BBC captured footage of a man being fined £90 for disorderly behaviour after hiding his face while walking past a police face recognition trial in east London. “If I want to cover my face, I’ll cover my face,” the unnamed man said. “It’s not for them to tell me not to cover my face.”
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He and Bridges are one of a number of people fighting back against the encroachment of pervasive surveillance into everyday lives. “People are excited about the innovation and convenience of technology, but are becoming increasingly mindful about how intrusive it is,” says Mariann Hardey of Durham University, UK.
Scandals such as the Cambridge Analytica affair have made us more aware of the risks of handing over too much information, and given people an increased focus on understanding how their data is collected and used.
And legislation is being strengthened to provide support for those wanting to oppose the surveillance state – the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, introduced last year, offers to give people much more control over their data.
Politicians are also beginning to realise the dangers of letting face recognition technology go too far. US Democratic congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is one of the most high-profile opponents of face recognition.
“I don’t want to see an authoritarian surveillance state, whether it’s run by a government or whether it’s run by five corporations,” she said yesterday. Ocasio-Cortez also referenced existing US privacy legislation, including a woman’s right to privacy when having an abortion. “In our right to privacy, this is about our right to our entire body,” she said.
She’s not the only politician taking arms against pervasive surveillance. “Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not an instruction manual,” says Jo Swinson, a Liberal Democrat member of Parliament in the UK. “We should be very wary of technology without proper debate and scrutiny about the implications for personal privacy.”
Even some Amazon shareholders have been spooked. The firm sells face recognition technology, known as Rekognition, to governments and police forces across the world, including the FBI and Orlando Police Department.
This week, investors who believed the system is infringing people’s civil liberties forced a vote at Amazon’s annual general meeting on whether the firm should stop supplying it to government agencies, but it failed to pass. In a response, Amazon said it was not aware of a single report of the system being used in a harmful manner.
That may make you think that the battle against face recognition is already lost. But as the number of individual skirmishes being fought indicate, this is an argument that won’t be going away any time soon.
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