Law professors Barry Friedman and Andrew Guthrie Ferguson propose a compromise in facial recognition technology:
We should ban “face surveillance,” the use of facial recognition (in real time or from stored footage) to track people as they pass by public or private surveillance cameras, allowing their whereabouts to be traced.
On the other hand, we should allow “face identification”— again, with strict rules — so the police can use facial recognition technology to identify a criminal suspect caught on camera.
Here’s a Way Forward on Facial Recognition
They propose four requirements for allowing facial IDs in law enforcement:
- facial IDs should be proven effective across gender and race;
- facial IDs should be restricted only to serious crimes;
- facial IDs should not be limited to criminal databases, inclusion in which may have been influenced by racist policing policies; and
- judicial warrants should be required.
But unless we ban face surveillance for private entities, I think the cat is already out of the bag. Are police to be in a worse position than the local market? That seems untenable.