Facial Recognition: is this Total Surveillance?

 There was a great article in yesterday’s The Age, Facial Recognition: The Case for and against ‘Total Surveillance’.

Facial recognition technology is about to become the most significant technology that we have seen for a long time.  It is state of the art in terms of recognising and identifying people and this will be particularly useful when it comes to crime, airport security and so on.  The person being identified won’t know they are being watched as the technology doesn’t require the person looking into a camera.

This may all go well for criminal issues but how about the average person who has never done anything wrong in their life?  Unlike other forms of recognition or identifiers, the additional aspect of face recognition means that it forms a biometric identifier which cannot be undone if your face has been hacked.  This raises serious issues in terms of privacy and identity issues.

Have a read of the article which states the ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments and let me know what your thoughts are.

Tags: Internet • Privacy • Surveillance • Technology shifts