Dear Reader
Our lead story this month is on facial recognition technology and its benefits for the law enforcement machinery to efficiently prevent, investigate and reduce crime, as well as the advantages it offers a city’s civic authorities to manage staff and optimise productivity.
Face recognition is a method of identifying or verifying the identity of an individual using their face. Face recognition systems can be used to identify people in photos, video, or in real-time. Law enforcement may also use mobile devices to identify people during field work.
Arguments in favour of the usage of this technology through images captured by publicly deployed video surveillance cameras are strong, with their reasons clearly emphasised. However, there is a growing concern amongst a section of the society which feels that when you have the ability to track people in physical space, in effect everybody becomes subject to the surveillance of the government. Facial recognition technology provides governments with unprecedented power to track people going about their daily lives and this section of society feels that this is incompatible with a healthy democracy.
To drive home this view, San Francisco, long at the heart of the technology revolution, took a stand against potential abuse recently by banning the use of facial recognition software by the police and other agencies. Another company that supplies 47 out of the 69 largest police agencies in the United States with body cameras and software, announced last week that it will ban the use of facial recognition systems on its devices, as it feels that face recognition technology is not currently reliable enough to ethically justify its use on body worn cameras.
Face recognition data can be prone to error, which can implicate people in crimes they haven’t committed. Facial recognition software is particularly bad at recognizing African Americans and other ethnic minorities, women, and young people, often misidentifying or failing to identify them, thus disparately impacting certain groups. Face recognition systems vary in their ability to identify people under challenging conditions such as poor lighting, low quality image resolution, and suboptimal angle of view (such as in a photograph taken from above, looking down on an unknown person)
As per a report in the New York Times, similar bans are under consideration in Oakland and in Somerville, Mass., outside of Boston. In Massachusetts, a bill in the State Legislature would put a moratorium on facial recognition and other remote biometric surveillance systems. On Capitol Hill, a bill introduced last month would ban users of commercial face recognition technology from collecting and sharing data for identifying or tracking consumers without their consent, although it does not address the government’s uses of the technology. Even civil liberties groups have expressed unease about the technology’s potential abuse by government amid fears that it may shove the United States in the direction of an overly oppressive surveillance state.
However, the usefulness of face recognition technology in securing critical infrastructure facilities and installations such as airports and other public places, including places of worship and national borders installations cannot be denied. Face recognition and other biometric technologies are being successfully used by authorities to trace missing persons, especially children in India. In fact, Indian police forces have solved many criminal cases in recent years, making use of artificial intelligence, where face recognition capabilities have played a major role. But, is this technology a double edged knife?
In the near future, face recognition technology will likely become more ubiquitous. It may be used to track individuals’ movements out in the world like automated license plate readers track vehicles by plate numbers. If not used ethically, its ramifications are scary!
The Delhi government proposes to install 2.8 lakh CCTV cameras in its 70 constituencies at a project cost of Rs 570 crores, which includes their maintenance for 5 years. Other cities too are deploying video surveillance cameras that serve the police in curbing crime and managing traffic, they also serve the municipal authorities to manage the civic infrastructure and services.
Till we meet next month, Stay Safe and keep others safe.
G B Singh
Group Editor
Email: gbsingh@1stasset.org
Follow me on @EditorGB
Connect with me on Linkedin.com/in/gbsingh9
