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2020 | Book

Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

Face Recognition Technology

Compulsory Visibility and Its Impact on Privacy and the Confidentiality of Personal Identifiable Images

Author: Ian Berle

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Law, Governance and Technology Series

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book examines how face recognition technology is affecting privacy and confidentiality in an era of enhanced surveillance. Further, it offers a new approach to the complex issues of privacy and confidentiality, by drawing on Joseph K in Kafka’s disturbing novel The Trial, and on Isaiah Berlin’s notion of liberty and freedom. Taking into consideration rights and wrongs, protection from harm associated with compulsory visibility, and the need for effective data protection law, the author promotes ethical practices by reinterpreting privacy as a property right. To protect this right, the author advocates the licensing of personal identifiable images where appropriate.

The book reviews American, UK and European case law concerning privacy and confidentiality, the effect each case has had on the developing jurisprudence, and the ethical issues involved. As such, it offers a valuable resource for students of ethico-legal fields, professionals specialising in image rights law, policy-makers, and liberty advocates and activists.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
The emergence of digital photography in the 1980s and the invention of Adobe PhotoShop© in 1987 revolutionised photography and subsequently enabled the informatisation of the body. Without digital photography, imaging dependent biometrics would not be possible because the sensors that have replaced film quantify physical components of bodies in the process of informatisation, that film and its analogue processes cannot accomplish. Ultimately quantification converts what can be seen into data and completes the cycle of informatisation. When bodies are informatised, face recognition, irises and fingerprint biometrics are obtainable and regularly used for border control, surveillance and personal access applications. This chapter therefore, briefly describes how Face Recognition Technology (FRT) is founded on digital photography, and reviews how FRT has impacted privacy and confidentiality. The ethical and legal implications of FRT, and how personal autonomy in terms of consent and choice are also considered.
Ian Berle
Chapter 2. What Is Face Recognition Technology?
Abstract
Face recognition technology is one of several biometric tools or modalities used for person identification and verification. Broadly, it is mainly a monitoring and security technology designed to facilitate or control access used by governments, law enforcement agencies, and commerce. It has many other uses already in play, and many others are on the horizon. The chapter begins with a discussion of the technology and is followed with an overview of a few large-scale utilisers of FRT.
Ian Berle
Chapter 3. Some Ethical and Legal Issues of FRT
Abstract
This chapter considers some of the ethical and legal issues of FRT. Ethically FRT is problematic and legally challenging, ethically because of its intrusiveness and legally because the technology exceeds and tests the jurisprudential boundaries. Some examples of where and how FRT is used to illustrate the issues, and how privacy campaigners have responded to its burgeoning uses by commercial enterprises and government agencies.
Ian Berle
Chapter 4. Privacy and Surveillance Surveyed
Abstract
This chapter considers how surveillance modalities affect privacy. The modalities include government sanctioned CCTV or social networks, each of which create tensions and concerns between the data subject-citizen and the data processor.
The chapter focuses on the wide uses of surveillance and considers the sociological and philosophical responses to the burgeoning levels of surveillance and its effect on personal liberty, especially, when the prevailing political view that increased surveillance and subsequent incursions of personal liberty is a societal good. The chapter also concentrates on autonomy and related privacy issues that are associated with the acquisition of images or audio recordings by selected agencies and how those images or recordings are used or disseminated.
Ian Berle
Chapter 5. Autonomy, Liberty and Privacy
Abstract
General ignorance of the range and kinds and implications of the use of FRT raises ethical and legal questions. Some general points may be widely known. For instance, how FRT is used to identify individuals by converting their facial features into digital data and comparing that real-time or recorded data with images stored in databases. The stored images have usually been harvested from individuals who supplied an identity photograph, such as for a passport, driving licence or travel pass. So far, so good. But how far does the average citizen understand that whilst this use of images in identity photographs can also facilitate the application process, it is also an integral part of the document containing other information, and the database that is created may be ethically problematic. This is especially true when used or accessed covertly by agencies without explicit consent and not directly associated with the primary purpose of the photograph. Therefore, this chapter examines how autonomy, liberty and privacy are affected by FRT and presents some elements of an ethical framework, from which FRT’s impact on autonomy, liberty and privacy can be assessed.
Ian Berle
Chapter 6. Compulsory Visibility?
Abstract
The principle of compulsory visibility is an idea introduced by the philosopher Michel Foucault. This chapter considers how facial recognition technology magnifies visibility, whether by the use of body-worn cameras or by coercion or other means and has become panoptical in its reach. Unlike Bentham’s panopticon FRT has replaced the physical structures and although not necessarily disciplinary, FRT imposes a compulsory visibility on persons subjected to its gaze, whenever they are exposed to its gaze whether for investigative or security purposes or on social networks.
Ian Berle
Chapter 7. The Law and Data Protection
Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the range of legislation associated with the regulation of data management. Of special interest here is the status of personal images as ‘data’. The issue of whether photographic or digital images are in fact data creates tensions that until recently did not exist. In other words, the technology has overtaken the legal discourse and has required either that the image data should be assimilated into existing law on a case-by-case basis, or for new laws to be drafted. Therefore, since face recognition is an imaging modality previous statutory instruments are inadequate, and this chapter provides the back-drop to the on-going legal discourse.
Ian Berle
Chapter 8. The Law and Surveillance
Abstract
This chapter considers the legalities of surveillance and the judicial powers that form the legal and regulatory frameworks associated with the constraints on liberty. The chapter uses case histories to describe the effect of surveillance and its potential harms, and the critical responses from privacy campaigners, and less frequently the differences of opinion that occurs between governments and their agencies when individuals in one jurisdiction are treated differently in another.
Ian Berle
Chapter 9. State Paternalism and Autonomy
Abstract
This chapter examines how state paternalism affects autonomy. Paternalism is described as active and passive, both of which affect personal liberty but can be regarded as beneficial. The ethico-legal issues associated with paternalism are considered in detail and how the state might claim the right to use face recognition technology without consent is examined.
Ian Berle
Chapter 10. State Paternalism and Data
Abstract
This chapter discusses how the data is entrusted to data controllers. However, the disconnection between data subject and data controller requires the data subject to trust their information to the paternalistic actions and oversight of the data controller that are the operational aspects of adherence to data protection legislation. But depending on the purpose for which the data is obtained or information surveilled, necessitates judicial oversight to prevent excessive or disproportionate use of surveillance powers that include the covert interception of data. The chapter further discusses the issues surrounding the conflicting demands of State Paternalism and Data.
Ian Berle
Chapter 11. The Future of Face Recognition Technology and Ethico: Legal Issues
Abstract
This chapter summarises the impact of face recognition technology on privacy and confidentiality and looks to the future of FRT in terms of its technical developments, and the main ethico-legal issues that may arise. Moreover, the use of FRT by commercial enterprises and governments is divergent when, opposing interests occur between the lawmakers and the public, and between the public and commercial enterprises. The future of FRT should, and to some extent shall, also be shaped by its ethical acceptability and legal regulation. Ultimately, an individual’s identity is intimately tied up with their face, and direct technological recognition by the facial contours will be a continuing issue of social concern and sensitivity.
Ian Berle
Chapter 12. Conclusion
Abstract
This chapter summarises some of the key issues raised. Especially as error free face recognition technology and other biometric technologies have become a major pursuit for technology companies as they seek to perfect their products to satisfy commercial and government expectations. Such expectations will require justifying, since the data ecosystems are evolving, and new ways of thinking become necessary. For instance, data ownership and rights, and how the democratising of technology has started to challenge the status quo. Additionally, the right to image ownership is an issue, that like Cinderella is in need of recognition, if data protection law is to fully acknowledge the status of personal identifiable images.
Ian Berle
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Face Recognition Technology
Author
Ian Berle
Copyright Year
2020
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN
978-3-030-36887-6
Print ISBN
978-3-030-36886-9
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36887-6