Now everyone's face is shamed

Here's an area of life that could be better left in the hands of humans.

Live facial recognition cameras are being introduced more & more widely. I've found myself in areas that will have scanned my face, & likely many more where my face was scanned without me knowing.

One place that live facial recognition cameras are appearing more widely in is supermarkets.

The aim of scanning, & storing, everyone's face that walks into a supermarket is to prevent theft. There are multiple issues with this.

CCTV cameras have acted as deterrents for years. Since these cameras work within an on-premise system (hence the CC, closed-circuit) their use has always been for them to act as extra eyes for security staff. The footage is recorded so that the security staff have even more eyes (into the past).

I have seen security guards in supermarkets do a great job of preventing theft (I've also seen some turn a blind eye). They good ones also prevent nuisance & grief for regular customers. I once watched a single security guard stand up to a number of people who had clearly been (previously) barred & recognised them at the entrance.

The actions of the security guard I saw tells me:

• the discomfort, even risk, in challenging those who were barred from entering (rather than do nothing) is a sign that this was less grief for them (& others) compared to what might have happened if they had entered the shop
• the security guard, the person responsible for order & safety, would have been able to make a judgement call about the specific situation – a group of recognised people entering together might raise an alarm, but only one of these individuals entering with, say, their family
• over time, opinion on a person can change – for example, someone who has been antisocial in the past might have changed their ways
• being recognisable to a security guard, who will have a limited capacity for faces, places people among a relatively small group of people to watch out for, leaving most people not under surveillance (the guard wouldn't be able to remember most people who pass by)

This situation is different with live facial recognition cameras (different from standard CCTV):

• these cameras face no discomfort, no personal stake in challenging someone, they'll scan young children a human would make no effort to
• these cameras are incapable of considering context – someone who warrants being watched will be flagged no matter the situation
• changing the opinion of a person would require manual intervention, in an otherwise automated system (talking someone off of a watch list something I expect is tightly controlled)
• these cameras have the capacity to remember every face, so everyone is on the list of people to watch out for, & these cameras do make mistakes, especially if you're a minority

This is an area of life that would be better left to humans.

A man was instructed to leave a Sainsbury's supermarket without explanation, after staff incorrectly identified him as an offender flagged by facial recognition software.

-- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0lxdn4w2g3o

A police force has paused the use of live facial recognition (LFR) cameras after a study found it was statistically more likely to identify black people than other ethnic groups.

-- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q9e4573nvo

Companies might be required to delete any face scans captured by live facial recognition cameras. Yesterday, in Wanting a personal algorithm, I showed examples of tech companies ignoring the wishes, & the law, when it came to people's data it should have deleted, but kept further use.

Wanting a personal algorithm

I have a number of friends who argue for online tracking, with the aim of having a personalised algorithm on tech platforms. They want to see more of what they’re interested in & want tailored ads, rather than generic ones. This is a viewpoint I don’t agree with, but

Better TechThomas Heslin

Having live facial recognition cameras is the equivalent of a human security guard sat in front of a wall of shame containing the faces of every person that walks into the supermarket. A new customer is instantly added to the wall as soon as they're spotted (or even if they just walked past the entrance, never to go inside). Once spotted, each person is then checked for any wrong-doing, against a watch list.

This is an area of life that would be better left to humans.