Who’s Logging Your Face?

In 1892, Sir Francis Galton published a treatise in which he argued that the patterns on our fingers were “an incomparably surer criterion of identity than any other bodily feature.” Today, fingerprinting is ubiquitous. But the limits of the technique are clear: Fingerprinting is a targeted, one-off process whereby a single person is identified, typically through an in-person or on-site interaction.

Advanced face recognition, on the other hand, lets police identify people from far away and without interacting with them. It also lets them remotely identify groups of people. Picture police using telescope-like cameras to surreptitiously photograph and identify organized-crime figures at a meeting. Imagine a street surveillance camera that scans the face of every person walking by. Now, picture a world in which body-worn police cameras are equipped with real-time face-scanning software.

This is real technology — on sale, in use or coming soon. These tools will catch dangerous criminals, but, left unchecked, they also create profound questions about the future of our society. Will you attend a protest if you know the government can secretly scan your face and identify you — as police in Baltimore did during the Freddie Gray protests? Do you have the right to walk down your street without having your face scanned? If you don’t, will you lead your life in the same way? Will you go to a psychiatrist? A marriage counselor? An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting?...