Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 19:46:05 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: Your Face Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"From: Phil Agre <pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu> To: "Red Rock Eater News Service" <rre@lists.gseis.ucla.edu> Subject: [RRE]Your Face Is Not a Bar Code List-Subscribe: <mailto:rre-on@lists.gseis.ucla.edu> URL: http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" option. For information about RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, see http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Your Face Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places
Phil Agre http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/
Version of 7 September 2001. 2600 words.
Copyright 2001 by Phil Agre. You are welcome to forward this article in electronic form to anyone for any noncommercial reason. Please do not post it on any Web sites; instead, link to it here:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/bar-code.html
Given a digital image of a person's face, face recognition software matches it against a database of other images. If any of the stored images matches closely enough, the system reports the sighting to its owner. Research on automatic face recognition has been around for decades, but accelerated in the 1990s. Now it is becoming practical, and face recognition systems are being deployed on a large scale.
Some applications of automatic face recognition systems are relatively unobjectionable. Many facilities have good reasons to authenticate everyone who walks in the door, for example to regulate access to weapons, money, criminal evidence, nuclear materials, or biohazards. When a citizen has been arrested for probable cause, it is reasonable for the police to use automatic face recognition to match a mug shot of the individual against a database of mug shots of people who have been arrested previously. These uses of the technology should be publicly justified, and audits should ensure that the technology is being used only for proper purposes.
Face recognition systems in public places, however, are a matter for serious concern. The issue recently came to broad public attention when it emerged that fans attending the Super Bowl had unknowingly been matched against a database of alleged criminals, and when the city of Tampa deployed a face-recognition system in the nightlife district of Ybor City. But current and proposed uses of face recognition are much more widespread, as the resources at the end of this article demonstrate in detail. The time to consider the acceptability of face recognition in public places is now, before the practice becomes entrenched and people start getting hurt.
Nor is the problem limited to the scattered cases that have been reported thus far. As the underlying information and communication technologies (digital cameras, image databases, processing power, and data communications) become radically cheaper over the next two decades, face recognition will become dramatically cheaper as well, even without assuming major advances in technologies such as image processing that are specific to recognizing faces. Legal constraints on the practice in the United States are minimal. (In Europe the data protection laws will apply, providing at least some basic rights of notice and correction.) Databases of identified facial images already exist in large numbers (driver's license and employee ID records, for example), and new facial-image databases will not be hard to construct, with or without the knowledge or consent of the people whose faces are captured. (The images need to be captured under controlled conditions, but most citizens enter controlled, video-monitored spaces such as shops and offices on a regular basis.) It is nearly certain, therefore, that automatic face recognition will grow explosively and become pervasive unless action is taken now.
I believe that automatic face recognition in public places, including commercial spaces such as shopping malls that are open to the public, should be outlawed. The dangers outweigh the benefits. The necessary laws will not be passed, however, without overwhelming pressure of public opinion and organizing. To that end, this article presents the arguments against automatic face recognition in public places, followed by responses to the most common arguments in favor.
Arguments against automatic face recognition in public places
* The potential for abuse is astronomical. Pervasive automatic face recognition could be used to track individuals wherever they go. Systems operated by different organizations could easily be networked to cooperate in tracking an individual from place to place, whether they know the person's identity or not, and they can share whatever identities they do know. This tracking information could be used for many purposes. At one end of the spectrum, the information could be leaked to criminals who want to understand a prospective victim's travel patterns. Information routinely leaks from databases of all sorts, and there is no reason to believe that tracking databases will be any different. But even more insidiously, tracking information can be used to exert social control. Individuals will be less likely to contemplate public activities that offend powerful interests if they know that their identity will be captured and relayed to anyone that wants to know.
* The information from face recognition systems is easily combined with information from other technologies. Industry often refers to face recognition as "facial recognition" because they regard faces as one modality of identification among many. Among the many "biometric" identification technologies, face recognition requires the least cooperation from the individual. Automatic fingerprint reading, by contrast, requires an individual to press a finger against a machine. (It will eventually be possible to identify people by the DNA-bearing cells that they leave behind, but that technology is a long way from becoming ubiquitous.) Organizations that have good reasons to identify individuals should employ whatever technology has the least inherent potential for abuse, yet very few identification technologies have more potential for abuse than face recognition. Information from face recognition systems is also easily combined with so-called location technologies such as E-911 location tracking in cell phones, thus further adding to the danger of abuse.
* The technology is hardly foolproof. Among the potential downsides are false positives, for example that so-and-so was "seen" on a street frequented by drug dealers. Such a report will create "facts" that the individual must explain away. Yet the conditions for image capture and recognition in most public places are far from ideal. Shadows, occlusions, reflections, and multiple uncontrolled light sources all increase the risk of false positives. As the database of facial images grows bigger, the chances of a false match to one of those images grows proportionally larger.
* Many social institutions depend on the difficulty of putting names to faces without human intervention. If people could be identified just from looking in a shop window or eating in a restaurant, it would be a tremendous change in our society's conception of the human person. People would find strangers addressing them by name. Prospective customers walking into a shop could find that their credit reports and other relevant information had already been pulled up and displayed for the sales staff before they even inquire about the goods. Even aside from the privacy invasion that this represents, premature disclosure of this sort of information could affect the customer's bargaining position.
* The public is poorly informed about the capabilities of the cameras that are already ubiquitous in many countries. They usually do not realize, for example, what can be done with the infrared component of the captured images. Even the phrase "face recognition" does not convey how easily the system can extract facial expressions. It is not just "identity" that can be captured, then, but data that reaches into the person's psyche. Even if the public is adequately informed about the capabilities of this year's cameras, software and data sharing can be improved almost invisibly next year.
* It is very hard to provide effective notice of the presence and capabilities of cameras in most public places, much less obtain meaningful consent. Travel through many public places, for example government offices and centralized transportation facilities, is hardly a matter of choice for any individual wishing to live in the modern world. Even in the private sector, many retail industries (groceries, for example) are highly concentrated, so that consumers have little choice but to submit to the dominant company's surveillance practices.
* If face recognition technologies are pioneered in countries where civil liberties are relatively strong, it becomes more likely that they will also be deployed in countries where civil liberties hardly exist. In twenty years, at current rates of progress, it will be feasible for the Chinese government to use face recognition to track the public movements of everyone in the country.
Responses to arguments in favor of automatic face recognition in public places
* "All of the people in our database are wanted criminals. We don't store any of the images that our cameras capture, except when they match an image in the database. So the only people who have any cause for complaint are criminals."
The problems with this argument are numerous:
(1) We have to trust your word that the only people whose images are stored in the database are wanted criminals, and we have to trust your word that you throw away all of the images that fail to match the database.
(2) You don't really know yourself whether all of the people in the database are criminals. Quality control on those databases is far from perfect, as the database of "felons" that was used to purge some Florida counties' electoral rolls in 2000 demonstrated.
(3) Even if the only people in the database today are criminals, the forces pushing us down a slippery slope of every-expanding databases are nearly overwhelming. Once the system is established and working, why not add people with criminal records who have served their time? Then we could add alleged troublemakers who have been ejected from businesses in the past but have never been convicted of crimes, people who have been convicted of minor offenses such as shoplifting, people with court orders to stay away from certain places, missing persons, children whose parents are worried about them, elders whose children are worried about them, employees of the business where the system is operating, and other individuals who have signed contracts agreeing to be tracked. And once those people are added, it is then a short step to add many other categories of people as well.
* "Public is public. If someone happens to notice you walking in the park, you have no grounds for complaint if they decide to tell someone else where you were. That's all we're doing. You don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, and I have a free-speech right to communicate factual information about where you were."
A human being who spots me in the park has the accountability that someone can spot them as well. Cameras are much more anonymous and easy to hide. More important is the question of scale. Most people understand the moral difference between a single chance observation in a park and an investigator who follows you everywhere you go. The information collected in the second case is obviously more dangerous. What is more, custom and law have always recognized many kinds of privacy in public. For example, the press cannot publish pictures of most people in personally sensitive situations that have no legitimate news value. It is considered impolite to listen in on conversations in public. Pervasive face recognition clearly lies at the morally most problematic end of this spectrum. The chance of being spotted is different from the certainty of being tracked.
The phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy" comes from a US Supreme Court decision. The phrase has been widely criticized as useless, since reason that reasonable expectations of privacy in a situation can disappear as soon as someone starts routinely invading privacy in that situation. The problem is an often-exploited ambiguity in the word "expectation", which can mean either a prediction (with no logical implication that the world morally *ought* to hold conform to it) or a norm (with no logical implication that the world actually *will* conform to it). In arguing in favor of a ban on automatic face recognition in public places, one is not arguing for a blanket "right of privacy in public", which would be unreasonable and impractical. Rather, one is arguing for a right against technologically mediated privacy invasions of certain types. Technological mediation is key because of its continuous operation, standardized results, lack of other legitimate purposes, and rapidly dropping costs.
The argument about free speech rights is spurious because the proposed ban is not on the transfer of information, but on the creation of certain kinds of electronic records. You still have the right to communicate the same information if you acquire it in other ways.
* "Automatic face recognition stops crime. Police say they want it. And if it prevents one child from being killed then I support it."
A free society is a society in which there are limits on what the police can do. If we want to remain a free society then we need to make a decision. Once a new surveillance technology is installed, it is nearly impossible to stop the slippery slope toward ever broader law enforcement use of it. The case of automatic toll collection makes this clear. Absent clear legal protections, then, we should assume from the beginning that any technology that captures personal information will be used for law enforcement purposes, and not only in cases where lives are immediately at stake. The potential for abuse should then be figured into our decision about whether the technology should be deployed at all. That said, it is hardly proven that face recognition stops crime, when face recognition is being added to a world that already contains many other crime-fighting technologies. The range of crime detection technologies available to the police has grown immensely in recent years, and even if one encountered a case where a crime was solved using a given technology it by no means follows that the crime would not have been solved equally well using some other technology.
* "Privacy prevents the marketplace from functioning efficiently. When a company knows more about you, it can tailor its offerings more specifically to your needs. Of course if you ask people whether scary face recognition systems should be banned then they'll say yes. But you're asking the wrong question. The right question is whether people are willing to give up information in exchange for something of value, and most people are."
This is a non sequitur. Few proposals for privacy protection prevent people from voluntarily handing information about themselves to companies with which they wish to do business. The problem arises when information is transferred without the individual's knowledge, and in ways that might well cause upset or harm if they became known. What distinguishes automatic face recognition from many other equally good identification technologies is that it can be used without the individual's permission (and therefore without the individual having agreed to any exchange). That is why it should be banned.
* "A preoccupation with privacy is corrosive. Democracy requires people to have public personae, and excessive secrecy is unhealthy."
Privacy does not equal secrecy. Privacy means that an individual has reasonable control over what information is made public, and what is not. Any decent social order requires that individuals be entrusted with this judgement. Even if particular individuals choose to become secretive in a pathological way, forcing them to change will not help the situation and is intrinsincally wrong anyway. As to the value of public personae, we should encourage the development of technologies that give people the option to appear publicly where and how they want.
* "What do you have to hide?"
This line is used against nearly every attempt to protect personal privacy, and the response in each case is the same. People have lots of valid reasons, personal safety for example, to prevent particular others from knowing particular information about them. Democracy only works if groups can organize and develop their political strategies in seclusion from the government, and from any established interests they might be opposing. This includes, for example, the identities of people who might travel through public places to gather for a private political meeting. In its normal use, the question "What do you have to hide?" stigmatizes all personal autonomy as anti-social. As such it is an authoritarian demand, and has no place in a free society.
For more responses to bad arguments against privacy, see: http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/arguments.html
News articles with background on face recognition.
Facial-Recognition System Gets Millions in Federal Funds http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/016044.htm
Facial ID Systems Raising Concerns About Privacy http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12629-2001Jul31.html
Facial-Recognition Tech Has People Pegged http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/07/17/face.time.idg/
Face Scanners Turn Lens on Selves http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,45687,00.html
Face-Recognition Systems Offer New Tools, but Mixed Results http://www.biometricgroup.com/a_press/NYTimes_May_2001.htm
How Facial Recognition Software Finds Faces http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge/cuttingedge010706.html
Law Enforcement Agencies Working on 3D Face Recognition Technology http://asia.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/24/3d.face.recognition.idg/
Face-Recognition Technology Raises Fears of Big Brother http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C150015975%2C00.html
Seeking Clues to Recognition ... in Your Face http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/health-science/html98/face_20000111.html
Smile, You're On Scan Camera http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42317,00.html
Other sites with background information on face recognition technology and its potential for privacy invasion.
Electronic Privacy Information Center Face Recognition Page http://www.epic.org/privacy/facerecognition/
Coalition Declares December 24, 2001 to Be "World Subjectrights Day" http://wearcam.org/wsd.htm
Facial Recognition Vendor Test 2000 http://www.dodcounterdrug.com/facialrecognition/DLs/FRVT_2000.pdf http://www.dodcounterdrug.com/facialrecognition/FRVT2000/frvt2000.htm
Selected Facial Scan Projects http://www.facial-scan.com/selected_facial_scan_projects1.htm
US government site for biometric technology (including face recognition) http://www.biometrics.org/
Facing the Truth: A New Tool to Analyze Our Expressions http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/may2001/faces/
Biometrics: Face Recognition Technology http://www.sans.org/infosecFAQ/authentic/face_rec.htm
Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Washington, 20-21 May 2002 http://degas.umiacs.umd.edu/pirl/fg2002/
the two dominant face recognition companies http://www.visionics.com/faceit/ http://www.viisage.com/
other companies http://www.visionspheretech.com/menu.htm http://www.symtrontech.com/ http://www.cognitec-ag.de/ http://www.c-vis.com/htdocs/english/facesnap/ http://www.neurodynamics.com/ http://www.imagistechnologies.com/ http://www.spiritcorp.com/face_rec.html http://www.bio4.co.uk/ http://www.bioid.com/ http://www.miros.com/solutions/face.htm http://www.keyware.com/ http://www.bionetrix.com/
Web pages about technical research projects on face recognition.
directory of face recognition research http://www.cs.rug.nl/~peterkr/FACE/face.html
Face Recognition and Detection http://home.t-online.de/home/Robert.Frischholz/face.htm
DoD Counterdrug Program Face Recognition Technology Program http://www.dodcounterdrug.com/facialrecognition/Feret/feret.htm http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/humanid/feret/feret_master.html
Wearable Face Recognition and Detection http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/ccg/projects/face/
Identification of Faces From Video http://staff.psy.gla.ac.uk/~mike/videoproj.html
Evaluation of Face Recognition Algorithms http://www.cs.colostate.edu/evalfacerec/
slides from an MIT course on human and artificial face recognition http://web.mit.edu/9.670/www/
Gesture Recognition Home Page (related technology) http://www.cybernet.com/~ccohen/
Articles about face-recognition controversies in various places, roughly in reverse chronological order.
Borders stores
first Borders says it "suspended any plans to implement" face recognition ... http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO63359,00.html
... then it denies that it ever had any such intention http://www.politechbot.com/p-02447.html
Borders is planning to use face recognition to identify shop-lifters http://www.sundayherald.com/18007/
casinos
Smart Cameras at Casinos Spark a Debate on Privacy http://www.uniontrib.com/news/metro/20010717-9999_1n17cameras.html
Privacy Commissioner Reassures Public That Casinos Are Not Scanning All Patrons http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/whatsnew/newsrel/casino01.htm
OPP uses secret cameras in casinos ("police are secretly scanning the faces of customers at all Ontario casinos") http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/2001/2001-01-16-a-torontostar.html
Global Cash Access Signs New Contracts With 20 Gaming Properties (face-recognizing ATM machines in casinos) http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010823/232101_3.html
Smile! You're on Casino Camera http://wbbm.cbsnow.com/now/story/0,1597,274604-240,00.shtml
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Technology Helps Authorities Keep a Constant Eye on Public http://www.pilotonline.com/news/nw0827cam.html
Beach May Scan Oceanfront Faces http://www.pilotonline.com/news/nw0706fac.html
Huntington Beach, California
Imagis and ORION Chosen to Install Biometrics by Huntington Beach Police http://cipherwar.com/news/01/imagis_big_brother.htm
Jacksonville, Florida
Police Snooper Camera Fight Still Alive http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/083101/met_7161286.html
Florida City Moves to Ban Face-Recognition System http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/fcw2.htm
Pinellas County, Florida
Face Recognition System Will Be Used by Florida Sheriff's Office http://www.friendsofliberty.com/files/2001/07/27/02.htm
Britain
Think Tank Urges Face-Scanning of the Masses http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/20966.html
face recognition technology in the UK http://www.urban75.com/Action/cctv.html http://www.sourceuk.net/articles/a00624.html
Newham Council Launches "Face Recognition" in the UK http://www.newham.gov.uk/press/julythrunov98/facereg.html
Joyrider, 14, Is First Tagging Guinea Pig http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001242628,00.html
Colorado
Colorado Governor Doesn't Want Face Recognition Technology Abused http://www.thedenverchannel.com/den/entertainment/stories/technology-8 7985620010719-070716.html
Colorado Won't Use Facial Recognition Technology on Licenses http://www.thedenverchannel.com/den/entertainment/stories/technology-8 6955020010712-110740.html
Colorado To Use Face Recognition Photos To Stop ID Theft http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167655.html
Colorado to "Map" Faces of Drivers http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11%257E57823,00.html
Minnesota
Minnesota Adopts Visionics' FaceIt for Integrated Mug Shot Database System http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010814/142123.html
Super Bowl
Face Scans Match Few Suspects http://www.sptimes.com/News/021601/TampaBay/Face_scans_match_few_.shtml
ACLU Protests High-Tech Super Bowl Surveillance http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-02-super-bowl-surveillance.htm
Super Bowl Surveillance: Facing Up to Biometrics http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP209/IP209.pdf
Feds Use Biometrics Against Super Bowl Fans http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16561.html
Cameras Scanned Fans for Criminals http://www.sptimes.com/News/013101/TampaBay/Cameras_scanned_fans_.shtml
Tampa, Florida
Facial Frisking in Tampa http://www.privacyfoundation.org/commentary/tipsheet.asp?id=46&action=0
complete directory of Tampa news articles through early August from the ACLU http://www.gate.net/~rwms/aclutampacam.html
"Big Brother" Cameras on Watch for Criminals http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-08-02-big-brother-cameras.htm
"They made me feel like a criminal" http://www.sptimes.com/News/080801/TampaBay/_They_made_me_feel_li.shtml
Tampa Face-Recognition Vote Rattles Privacy Group http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168677.html
Civil Rights or Just Sour Grapes? http://www.sptimes.com/News/080301/TampaBay/Civil_rights_or_just_.shtml
Tampa City Council meeting which voted to keep the face recognition cameras http://www.ci.tampa.fl.us/appl_Cable_Communications_closed_captioning/ frmAgenda.asp
Click. BEEP! Face Captured http://www.sptimes.com/News/071901/Floridian/Click_BEEP_Face_captu.shtml
Tampa Gets Ready For Its Closeup http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,167846,00.html
Masked Protesters Fight Face Scans http://www.sptimes.com/News/071501/TampaBay/Masked_protesters_fig.shtml
Tampa Puts Face-Recognition System on Public Street http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-07-13-tampa-surveillance.htm
Congressional Leader Calls for Action on Ybor City Surveillance (Ybor City is a busy nightlife neighborhood of Tampa) http://www.wtsp.com/news/2001_07/12_ybor_cameras.htm
ACLU Probes Police Use of Facial-Recognition Cameras in Florida City http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n070601a.html http://freedom.house.gov/library/technology/aclu.asp
Tampa Scans the Faces in Its Crowds for Criminals http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/04/technology/04VIDE.html
public radio report about the controversy http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/20010702.atc.14.rmm
Ybor Police Cameras Go Spy-Tech http://www.sptimes.com/News/063001/TampaBay/Ybor_police_cameras_g.shtml
end
Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/