We’re now face-to-face with facial-recognition technology
Peek-a-boo!
They see you!
Friday morning, Jill Clayton, Alberta’s information and privacy commission, announced that she is opening an investigation into reports that two Calgary shopping malls were using facial recognition software to observe customers.
The facial recognition technology was embedded in map kiosks. When people looked at the screen, the screen looked back at them.
Customers received no notice that their faces were being scanned.
The public only learned they were being scanned when a visitor noticed strange computer code popping up on the ad screen at Chinook Centre, took a picture and posted it to Reddit.
(Pause here, if you would, to reflect upon the irony of a secret observation program being observed by someone, who then outed it on social media.
Insert your favourite reference to The Matrix, The Truman Show, Person of Interest, or Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, as you see fit.
Millennial media consumers may prefer a nod to Mr. Robot or Black Mirror.)
Mall owner Cadillac Fairview has insisted that there was nothing sinister about its little game of I-spy.
The company says it was only using the software to get a sense of the age and gender of people who stopped at the kiosk. It says it wasn’t tracking individual people or storing information, so it wasn’t violating any privacy rules.
But if a mall wanted to know the rough age and gender of its visitors, it could hire a few university students with clipboards to walk around the mall, ticking boxes. It wouldn’t need something as high-tech and expensive as facial recognition software for such a simple task. No wonder some people questioned whether the company had another longterm plan for the system it was secretly piloting in Calgary.
Still, whatever Cadillac Fairview was or wasn’t doing with the data, the information and privacy commissioner is sufficiently concerned that it was acting without the permission of customers.
Scott Sibbald speaks for the commission. Under PIPA, the province’s Personal Information Protection Act, he says businesses can only collect personal information from customers with the meaningful, informed consent of their customers. When they received a complaint from someone about the Calgary cameras, Clayton opened the investigation on her own initiative.
Friday afternoon, Canada’s federal privacy commission announced a separate investigation because Cadillac Fairview, which owns the Calgary malls, owns other malls across Canada.
It took another day for Cadillac Fairview to announce it is suspending the system at the Calgary malls.
Shopping centres use security cameras all the time to record us as we walk and buy. We’ve surrendered that much privacy already. So what is it about facial recognition software that spooks us — especially when so many eagerly use facial recognition on devices like the iPhone X or platforms such as Facebook and Google?
Jason Harley is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Alberta, whose research involves work with artificial intelligence, including using facial recognition technology, to see if it can learn to detect and identify emotions.
“Many of us don’t do a good job of being careful about what information is being collected from us. And it’s hard for an everyday person to stay abreast of all the changes happening on different platforms and devices,” said Harley.
“This is really about privacy literacy, It’s about what’s being collected about us and how it’s being used.”
Facial recognition software, he says, works by plotting points on your face, then using those points to extrapolate things like age and gender. Right now, it often makes mistakes. But as biometric technology grows more sophisticated, businesses could use it to track customers in extremely detailed ways.
The day might come when a mall could scan and match your face scan to your Facebook profile or Google search history, the better to guess what to sell you. It could identify your emotions as you enter and leave a store, the better to figure out how to make customers happy. Or it could track you through the mall, in real time, for security reasons.
When companies use facial recognition artificial intelligence without public knowledge or consent, Harley worries it will breed distrust of the technology itself. Still, he welcomes the opportunity Cadillac Fairview has created, however inadvertently, for this public discussion.
“I think it’s a good thing to have this kind of privacy debate. We need to decide what we’re comfortable with, where we think lines should be drawn. Biometric data has the potential for good, when used responsibly. But we need to give people the tools to make informed decisions.”