less effective. And most of the time, it doesn't matter if identification isn't tied to a real name. What's important is that we can be consistently identified over time. We might be completely anonymous in a system that uses unique cookies to track us as we browse the Internet, but the same process of correlation and discrimination still occurs. It's the same with faces; we can be tracked as we move around a store or shopping mall, even if that tracking isn't tied to a specific name. And that anonymity is fragile: If we ever order something online with a credit card, or purchase something with a credit card in a store, then suddenly our real names are attached to what was anonymous tracking information.
Regulating this system means addressing all three steps of the process. A ban on facial recognition won't make any difference if, in response, surveillance systems switch to identifying people by smartphone MAC addresses. The problem is that we are being identified without our knowledge or consent, and society needs rules about when that is permissible.
Similarly, we need rules about how our data can be combined with other data, and then bought and sold without our knowledge or consent. The data broker industry is almost entirely unregulated; there's only one law -- passed in Vermont in 2018 -- that requires data brokers to register and explain in broad terms what kind of data they collect. The large Internet surveillance companies like Facebook and Google collect dossiers on us are more detailed than those of any police state of the previous century. Reasonable laws would prevent the worst of their abuses.
Finally, we need better rules about when and how it is permissible for companies to discriminate. Discrimination based on protected characteristics like race and gender is already illegal, but those rules are ineffectual against the current technologies of surveillance and control. When people can be identified and their data correlated at a speed and scale previously unseen, we need new rules.
Today, facial recognition technologies are receiving the brunt of the tech backlash, but focusing on them misses the point. We need to have a serious conversation about all the technologies of identification, correlation and discrimination, and decide how much we as a society want to be spied on by governments and corporations -- and what sorts of influence we want them to have over our lives.
This essay previously appeared in the New York Times.
EDITED TO ADD: Rereading this post-publication, I see that it comes off as overly critical of those who are doing activism in this space. Writing the piece, I wasn't thinking about political tactics. I was thinking about the technologies that support surveillance capitalism, and law enforcement's usage of that corporate platform. Of course it makes sense to focus on face recognition in the short term. It's something that's easy to explain, viscerally creepy, and obviously actionable. It also makes sense to focus specifically on law enforcement's use of the technology; there are clear civil and constitutional rights issues. The fact that law enforcement is so deeply involved in the technology's marketing feels wrong. And the technology is currently being deployed in Hong Kong against political protesters. It's why the issue has momentum, and why we've gotten the small wins we've had. (The EU is considering a five-year ban on face recognition technologies.) Those wins build momentum, which lead to more wins. I should have been kinder to those in the trenches.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/01/modern_mass_sur.html