How does the technology work?
It scans faces, either in person or on a photograph, and measures distinguishing facial features such as eye position, eyebrow shape, and nostril angle. This creates a distinctive digital “faceprint”—much like a fingerprint— which the system then runs through a database to check for a match. Law enforcement agencies have had faces on file for decades; their databases provide them with the identified person’s name, age, address, and any criminal history. But facial recognition is increasingly being used by commercial firms too. Facebook’s system for “tagging” a photo—identifying who is in the picture—is now as accurate as users doing it themselves. Apple’s new iPhone X can be unlocked when its owner simply looks at it. As the technology becomes more widespread, there are growing fears that it will erode privacy and be misused by bad actors. “We need to ask ourselves,” says Kelly Gates, author of Our Biometric Future, “whether a world of ubiquitous automated identification is really one we want to build.” the FBI now has access to photographs of half the U.S. adult population, according to a major 2017 report by the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology. Eighty percent of these people don’t have a criminal record; their faces are on file solely because they have some form of state ID, such as a resident’s card or a driver’s license. Several police departments, including Los Angeles’, have even started using body cams for “real-time” facial recognition of people officers are talking to on the street or during traffic stops. But the system is far from flawless. One in seven of the FBI’s searches identifies an innocent party, even when the actual culprit is in the database. And facial recognition has always been less reliable for people with darker skin—because of the way light reflects off it—who are already arrested in disproportionately high numbers. “If you’re black, you’re more likely to be affected by this technology, and that technology is more likely to be wrong,” says Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). “That’s a hell of a combination.”