The Chinese tech giant Alibaba recently invested $600 million in a start-up that specializes in facial and object recognition. Thanks to the investment the start-up, SenseTime, is now the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence start-up. Although such technology undoubtedly has potential when it comes to picking up your morning coffee and easing congestion at metro ticket lines, it has been making news in China because it is playing an increasingly prevalent role in that country’s growing surveillance state. While the Chinese are leaders in surveillance technology innovation, we should keep in mind that facial recognition in the U.S. also poses a unique and significant threat to privacy, and it’s a threat that is not being adequately addressed.
Facial recognition fits in the family tree of biometric investigatory technologies, which determine identity via analysis of unique biological and physical traits. Many are familiar to anyone who watches CSI shows or other fictional portrayals of law enforcement: fingerprint and DNA analysis are a couple of examples.
If law enforcement has access to your fingerprints it’s likely because you volunteered them as part of a job requirement, you’re an immigrant, they were recorded after you were arrested, or they were collected at a crime scene. About 40 percent of fingerprints in the FBI’s fingerprint database are not related to arrests or forensic investigations. The FBI’s DNA database only includes DNA related to criminal arrests or forensic investigations.
Unlike databases for fingerprints and DNA, one of the FBI’s facial recognition services allows agents to search through databases that mostly include information related to law-abiding Americans, with only 8 percent of the facial images in the network being associated with criminal or forensic investigations. This is in part thanks to the fact that the FBI has access to drivers license photos from at least 16 states as well as passport photos from the State Department. All told, this Facial Analysis Comparison and Evaluation services allows the FBI to access more than 411 million facial images. A Georgetown study on facial recognition estimates that about half of American adults can be found in a law enforcement facial recognition network.
This is especially concerning because facial recognition can be used to conduct surveillance. It’s already being used for the purpose in China, and here in the U.S. the law enforcement community seems poised to spread the use of facial recognition without sufficient limitations in place.
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