Mass data gathering and surveillance: the fight against facial recognition technology in the globalized world

Abstract

The growing use of facial recognition technologies has put them under the regulatory spotlight all around the world. The EU considers to regulate facial regulation technologies as a part of initiative of creating ethical and legal framework for trustworthy artificial intelligence. These technologies are attracting attention of the EU data protection authorities, e.g. in Sweden and the UK. In May, San Francisco was the first city in the US to ban police and other government agencies from using facial recognition technology, soon followed by other US cities. The paper aims to analyze the impact of facial recognition technology on the fundamental rights and values as well as the development of its regulation in Europe and the US. The paper will reveal how these technologies may significantly undermine fundamental rights, in particular the right to privacy, and may lead to prejudice and discrimination. Moreover, alongside the risks to fundamental rights a wider impact of these surveillance technologies on democracy and the rule of law needs to be assessed. Although the existing laws, in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation already imposes significant requirements, there is a need for further guidance and clear regulatory framework to ensure trustworthy use of facial recognition technology.

Police use of facial recognition technology: The potential for engaging the public through co-constructed policy-making

“…Introna and Wood (2004) argue that the very designs of silent technologies are inherently political because they include certain interests while excluding others, for instance by way of the composition of the training sets used by particular FRTs. The "silent" nature of FRT therefore poses several risks to privacy and raises questions about how the data collected could be (mis)used by the police (Nesterova, 2020).…”

“…The potential benefits of this more expanded one-to-many FRT usage include the ability to locate people of interest to police (e.g. terrorists) more easily and in real-time, which could enhance public safety (Carter, 2018; Galterio et al, 2018; Nesterova, 2020). FRT can also be used to find/identify missing or trafficked people (Carter, 2018; Galterio et al, 2018), sexually exploited children (Russell, 2020), and improve the efficiency of investigations (Carter, 2018; Hamann and Smith, 2019; Klum et al, 2014).…”

“…By contrast, a disproportionate number of FNs may lead to a false sense that the system is more effective than it is. Thus, accuracy is highly dependent on the quality of the data being used by the automated technology (Nesterova, 2020).…”

“…Despite claims of FRT being automated, there is still much discretion and human oversight throughout its design and implementation (Dessimoz and Champod, 2016; Fussey et al, 2021; Kotsoglou and Oswald, 2020). As such, properly framing and limiting appropriate uses of FRT and procedures for preventing over-reliance and mitigating bias are key (Nesterova, 2020). Few guidelines have been provided to, or developed by, police for how to implement FRT in a rights-protective manner, leading to the above-noted controversies.…”

Ideal theory in AI ethics

“…My industry news streams are flooded with stories of appalling violations of security and privacy (Crawford et al 2019), crisis opportunism in health care and education (Gerke et al 2020, Teräs et al 2020, monstrous applications of AI tech that trade in open racism, sexism, and violence (Birhane 2020, Ongweso Jr. 2020, applications that embed these technologies deep within the infrastructure of surveillance capitalism and the police state (Benjamin 2019b, Doctorow 2020, all wrapped in a form of deliberately wishful thinking that can only be built on an ignorance of history and the detachment of privilege (Moriah 2020). The few important victories achieved through activist organizing, such as bans on facial recognition in a few major cities (Nesterova 2020), have provided some needed relief and encouragement, but that relief is quickly overwhelmed by despair as the industry unfailingly sinks to new and devastating lows.…”