Face recognition in public - EU mulls ban

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union is considering banning facial recognition technology in public areas for up to five years, to give it time to work out how to prevent abuses, according to proposals seen by Reuters.

The plan by the EU’s executive – set out in an 18-page white paper – comes amid a global debate about the systems driven by artificial intelligence and widely used by law enforcement agencies.

EU mulls five-year ban on face recognition tech in public areas.

The idea of a five-year ban while officials and others figure out how to prevent face recognition abuse seems wise. We’ve not been good at thinking in terms of ‘hey wait a moment, how do we want this to work?’ in the past.

Of course, there are many governments, companies and others who can’t wait to abuse face recognition technology.

Meanwhile, China is heading in the opposite direction:

China to introduce face scans for mobile users – BBC News

Beijing wants people to use only real identities online but there is concern over data collection.

Source: China due to introduce face scans for mobile users – BBC News

“People in China are now required to have their faces scanned when registering new mobile phone services, as the authorities seek to verify the identities of the country’s hundreds of millions of internet users.”

It’s creepy. Another step on a path to a terrifying totalitarian state that is starting to make George Orwell’s 1984 nightmare look mild in comparison.

There are two worrying things about this development. 

First, China could be paving the way for other governments to do something similar. In the West this may be pitched as protection from terrorism or crime, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be abused.

Second, it may not be secure. It’s bad enough for abusive totalitarian or even nominally democratic governments to use this technology to keep tabs on people, but what if criminals get their hands on it? Say if violent men use it to stalk women. We know that already happens with technologies like police car registration plate databases.