Reasonable on the face of it
How sinister we let our society become will not be from the technology we employ, but the institutions that will set the rules under which the technology operates.
You have probably never stopped to consider who owned the rights to your face. If you did the answer is self-evident, because it is your face after all.
But the use of facial recognition software by a South Island supermarket to identify shoplifters has shown that while it may indeed be your face, copies of it can be made and used against you when you don’t play by the rules.
There has been the usual outpouring of anxieties over the use of such technology as a threat to our personal privacy and freedoms, except we’re already so far down that track it seems ridiculous to cry uncle over this.
Long gone are the days when we could move through life and technology not track our every step.
Not only are we watched by countless CCTV cameras but, if you carry a phone, your personal information of where you go, how many steps you take, who you go with and what you do when you get there are just some of the data being hoovered up by tech companies like Facebook, Google and Apple every day.
That there is now technology that can recognise who you are from a distance is not so much a gamechanger as another escalation in the losing battle to keep who, what, when and where you are to yourself.
The argument for implementing the technology, like most security technology before it, is audaciously reasonable. No retailer or rational shopper is against reducing shoplifting, because reducing shoplifting ultimately has a gravitational effect on price.
Nor can anyone who is not a shoplifter be against it, because if you’re not a shoplifter you won’t even know it’s there. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.
It’s a strong argument. It really is. But it relies on good and bad being absolutes, which they never have been, and so ultimately it’s a sinister threat to toe the line, whatever that line may be.
How sinister we let our society become will not be from the technology we employ, but the institutions that will set the rules under which the technology operates.
So far laws and rules have been unable to keep pace with the changes in technology. That’s no surprise. People themselves have struggled to keep up with technology.
It is hard to make sure what you don’t understand plays by the rules you don’t know you need.
But the rules around when, where and on whom facial recognition can be used are likely to come. In New Zealand at least. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s public concerns about the technology and the Privacy Commisioner’s handwringing signal that much.
It won’t stop the use of it, but it will likely put restrictions on it so that we don’t have to worry about being collared for that unpaid parking ticket every time we run into the supermarket for a bottle of milk.
What the laws may not stop is retailers using the technology on us in other irritatingly useful ways.
Like being identified as someone who needs a bit of moisturiser, some new glasses, or who appreciates a great special on frozen chicken portions.