Facial Recognition: Good or Bad?

National security is more important than ever, threats often hidden in plain sight. Countries and technology firms are finding solutions to identify threats in a crowd without them knowing. Facial recognition technology has been around for years, however, the technology has advanced to become more intelligent with the advancement in artificial intelligence and in high definition cameras. Facial recognition market is expected to grow to $7.7 billion with a variety of commercial applications from surveillance to marketing.

Facial recognition works by analysing facial features such as eyes, nose, mouth facial structure, and other unique features. A profile is saved on a database for comparison when a face is captured from a photo or video. The image capture could be alone or in a crowd but the facial recognition software reads the geometry of the face and calculates distances between key features as well as unique facial landmarks to identify a face. A facial signature is produced and compared to other facial signatures stored in the database.

Facial recognition technology is used in a lot of sectors today such as in airports to monitor people coming in and out. Mobile phone manufacturers use facial recognition as a security method to unlock phones. Social media platforms have used algorithms to spot faces and tag the correct person in the photo.

The technology provides a lot of benefits when used correctly, however, there are a lot of concerns about the privacy of where the information is stored and who has access to the stored facial signatures as well as ownership of the data. The use of the technology is more widespread and with governments and agencies having the ability to exchange information, the facial signature may end up in a lot of places. The free access of government agencies may mean you can no longer live a private life and remain anonymous.

Many systems are now implementing settings in which the user gets to select which pieces of personal information can be exchanged to third parties. When setting up devices it is good to check the privacy settings as most applications by default will have the exchange of personal information set to default.

In summary, when using facial recognition, software, agencies, and users will need to consider where the information will be stored and whether they have the right securities in place for the information to be secured correctly. Users will also be able to double-check the application settings to see whether personal information is being exchanged.