Australia has become the only democracy to use facial recognition technology in Covid-19 surveillance, which generated great concerns for privacy. Will regulation of facial recognition in Australia find the right balance between surveillance and privacy protection?
In October, convenience store group Seven-Eleven breached 1.6 million customer’s privacy by using faceprints for purpose other than stated in the survey to get customer feedback. However, it did not receive a fine because there is no law to regulate it.
Because there is great risk to abuse/leak of personal data or racial discrimination when using faceprint technology, the Australian Human Rights Commission has demanded a moratorium on the technology until Australia has a specific law to regulate its use. A law to regulate facial recognition technology was put forward in 2019, but it was pigeonholed after a parliamentary committee review discovered that it did not provide sufficient privacy protection.
Besides aiding in COVID-19 control, facial-recognition technology is being used to block people who may pose risks to the public from entering several sports stadium in Australia. Facial recognition offers an alternative security because it yields actionable information in real time and could prevent crime. Because of its augmenting security function, live facial recognition is already utilized by some police forces across the countries. For example, London’s Metropolitan Police uses it to watch specific areas to monitor the people who may be dangerous to the community. US schools are seeking to use it, and they hope to fend off school shootings by recognizing the faces of expelled students.
In the meantime, many democratic countries are pushing back against using facial recognition technology by police. In US, several cities including San Francisco (CA), Oakland (CA), Somerville (MA) introduced a moratorium against police using facial recognition.
Face recognition is not fool proof, although the technology is always becoming more sophisticated and advanced. First, while the best face identification algorithm has an error rate of 0.08%; the error rate of the real-time images can be as high as 9.3%. Second, most of the algorithm was initially based on the biased data which could lead to racial discrimination and bias. Third, the inevitable hackers and fraud technique will progress with the development of face recognition technology.
Despite the challenges of the technology itself and regulation, Edward Santow, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, remains optimistic. He said that the aim in Australia is to develop a novel approach which encourages the use of positive applications and to impose guardrails to prevent harms.
Source:
Download
In October, convenience store group Seven-Eleven breached 1.6 million customer’s privacy by using faceprints for purpose other than stated in the survey to get customer feedback. However, it did not receive a fine because there is no law to regulate it.
Because there is great risk to abuse/leak of personal data or racial discrimination when using faceprint technology, the Australian Human Rights Commission has demanded a moratorium on the technology until Australia has a specific law to regulate its use. A law to regulate facial recognition technology was put forward in 2019, but it was pigeonholed after a parliamentary committee review discovered that it did not provide sufficient privacy protection.
Besides aiding in COVID-19 control, facial-recognition technology is being used to block people who may pose risks to the public from entering several sports stadium in Australia. Facial recognition offers an alternative security because it yields actionable information in real time and could prevent crime. Because of its augmenting security function, live facial recognition is already utilized by some police forces across the countries. For example, London’s Metropolitan Police uses it to watch specific areas to monitor the people who may be dangerous to the community. US schools are seeking to use it, and they hope to fend off school shootings by recognizing the faces of expelled students.
In the meantime, many democratic countries are pushing back against using facial recognition technology by police. In US, several cities including San Francisco (CA), Oakland (CA), Somerville (MA) introduced a moratorium against police using facial recognition.
Face recognition is not fool proof, although the technology is always becoming more sophisticated and advanced. First, while the best face identification algorithm has an error rate of 0.08%; the error rate of the real-time images can be as high as 9.3%. Second, most of the algorithm was initially based on the biased data which could lead to racial discrimination and bias. Third, the inevitable hackers and fraud technique will progress with the development of face recognition technology.
Despite the challenges of the technology itself and regulation, Edward Santow, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, remains optimistic. He said that the aim in Australia is to develop a novel approach which encourages the use of positive applications and to impose guardrails to prevent harms.
Source:
Download
