Privacy Hangs In The Balance As Facial Recognition Technology Takes Over

Posted on July 1, 2015

Many mainstream media outlets have reported on the silent rise of facial recognition technology as a convenient shortcut catering to government and corporate interests in recent weeks.

Of course, this trend is of grave concern to privacy advocates. There are no federal laws that govern the use of this technology—it has evolved faster than legislators are able to keep up. But even if we accept the intentions behind these operations as innocuous, or even necessary (which of course, they aren’t) a dangerously slippery slope has been put in motion. Chances are information matching your face to your behavior and spending patterns is sitting on multiple databases without your knowledge and without any accountability for how that information is used or shared.

For more information and analysis, read Trevor Timm’s column for The Guardian here and Kashmir Hill’s Fusion exposé here. Listen to NPR’s Tom Ashbrook discuss the matter via his On Point show here.