Facial recognition has been circulating around the media for a few years now, and it appears that China is actually trying to adopt this technology into their Homeland Security.
Protestors in Hong Kong are trying to develop methods to block their faces from these technologies by developing masks which confuse the cameras.
While some people may believe this technology can help catch criminals, corrupt governments and people can use this technology to control their citizens by.
For example, the facial recognition being used in Hong Kong is trying to figure out the personal identity of the protestors, so they can later go back and arrest them.
The privacy issues with technologies opens up the question about who should be able to have control of these programs, and should they even exist at all?
This Tech Could Be Helpful, But Its Too Easy To Abuse
First off, it is good to know about what this technology doe sin the first place.
Facial Recognition is a type of technology where anyone can have their information pulled up just by a camera scanning your face. The software goes more in depth by pairing your face with all the other faces in the database.
So, even if you never signed up to have your face downloaded to a server, chances are facial recognition will do it without your permission.
This concept is what makes this software dangerous in terms of privacy. Now, China has been under fire for trying to adapt, and successfully implement, facial recognition into the streets of every city.
The Chinese government can now use an image of someone’s face, place it into a database, and the technology will search through millions of cameras to find where that person is at.
In a just society, this software can be used to find societies worst kinds of people (murderers, rapists, etc.).
All It Takes Is One Person To Use it For Ill, Be it Politician or Worse
Although, corrupt governments who censor the media, may use this technology to discover who is going against their system.
Another problem this technology may have is who says no one will hack this technology and gain access to millions of people’s information?
If there was someone who wanted to know a specific person’s location, and they knew how to hack the software, what would stop them from doing it?
There are many questions yet to be answered or asked about this technology, and until someone can figure out a way to make this technology as secure and ethical as possible, there seems to be no ‘security’ in this software at all.
If this program were to be implemented, it should go through decades of study before it starts being used by unjust governments and people.