Crossfire: Should the Government Use Facial Recognition Technology?
The Houston International Airport now uses biometric facial recognition for security. Photo Credit: Flickr
YES
By KALIN YUEN
Technology has advanced to the point in which anyone’s face can be detected and identified by using Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). It may seem frightening, but there are several benefits to it that can help our society.
FRT compares the templates of the faces in pictures to already existing pictures of faces and figures out their identities. These already existing pictures are from things such as driver’s licenses, identification records, and social media outlets.
In August 2019, the New York police were able to find an accused rapist within 24 hours by using facial recognition after a woman was threatened at knife-point. The suspect was found after the Facial Identification Section compared the video surveillance footage from a nearby store to mug shots. This was done quickly and prevented worse events from happening.
Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College said, “Chances are this case wouldn’t have been solved. It’s not when it’s solved—it’s if.”
“Relying on humans instead of machines has been a boon for criminals and terrorists for that matter,” he said.
O’Donnell described how criminals have been able to escape because we have been relying on humans to capture them while we could be using more efficient advanced technology. The use of FRT in the police force has continuously helped in finding criminals and has also been used to find missing people.
In India, the use of facial recognition helped find 3,000 missing children in four days when parents provided pictures to Child Help Care Centers. These pictures were quickly matched up to the pictures of children in these centers around India
Not only has FRT helped in providing protection and preventing crimes, it has also recently been used for advancing the current technology we have. One example is the use of FRT in airports. Instead of using physical boarding passes, a photo taken of a passenger can be compared to previous photos from visa and passport files to identify them.
Communications Manager of JetBlue Julianna Bryan said, “Customer responses have been overwhelming positive. More than 90% of customers have opted-in to self-board.”
Doing this saves time for airport staff who will not need to manually inspect passports anymore. This effectively uses facial recognition to make airport services more efficient and faster for everyone.
Facial recognition technology has also been used to unlock phones in recent smartphone models. Unlocking phones with FRT is extremely fast and convenient, using the camera built in the phone. The chances of someone unlocking someone else's phone with facial recognition is one in a million. It is way faster compared to using fingerprints and passcodes.
Overall, facial recognition helps in solving crimes, finding suspects, and improving current technology while providing protection and saving time.
NO
By JINNAN LI
Facial recognition is an emerging technology that stores the biometrics and data of millions of people. Giving the government access to these databases should cause concern for many in regard to their own safety and privacy.
According to the American news site, Forbes on a May 2018 police report, “the FBI has access to 412 million facial images for searches.”
With access to all this information, this is essentially an invasion of privacy since people have little to no knowledge or consent to allow the government to use this information to identify them regardless of whether or not they committed a crime.
Furthermore, facial recognition is a fairly new kind of technology, meaning it isn’t always a reliable source for identifying criminals and can lead to wrongful convictions.
The Washington Post discusses the use of facial recognition in airports and states how it can lead to the “potential for abuse.”
“People in the United States can’t be searched unless they’re suspected of crimes. And anonymity is a pillar of free speech,” said reporter Geoffrey A. Fowler.
Jennifer Lynch, the surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, “If we give in to this, we are allowing the government and the airlines to build up giant face-recognition databases of all of us.”
The implications of facial recognition can be quite frightening, and we can already see how this can be used in an invasive matter in the People’s Republic of China.
Unlike the U.S., China’s government is notorious for its mass surveillance, mainly used to supervise its citizens. Through cameras, social media, and now facial recognition, China is able to monitor people without their consent.
Jianan Qian, a writer for the New York Times, talked about her experiences there, saying, “We would hear stories about people saying things in WeChat groups, then being detained by the police, often on charges of disturbing the social order. Those stories would then disappear from the internet, making it impossible to know what had really happened.”
The citizens of China have little say against these invasions of privacy and are often censored and punished if they’re caught speaking out against their government.
Recently, China has implemented mandatory facial recognition scans for mobile users when registering new SIM cards. This further promotes fear and paranoia amongst its people as it’s another way for the government to track and record them.
A British newspaper, The Guardian, reported on what people thought of this change. One Chinese citizen said, “There is not even a little space for freedom. Everything is controlled. You cannot say what you want or choose what you want.”
China’s mass surveillance is a prime example of what can go wrong when the government has access to facial recognition. If the U.S. government ever decides to do the same, our safety and privacy will be at risk as well.