This was a very interesting post. I was also reading about the controversies surrounding facial recognition software.
Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Is Identifying Child Victims of Abuse by Kashmir Hill and Gabriel J.X. Dance. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/clearview-facial-recognition-child-sexual-abuse.html?searchResultPosition=4.
This article discusses how it is being used in law enforcement (including in Canada) to identify the victims of child sexual abuse. Specifically, Clearview allows officers to id victims in videos and photos that would not otherwise be identified. The officers are uploading “probe images” of children that have been victim of abuse onto a database. This information is stored forever by default on a database or the users of Clearview can have the information wiped after 30 days. The existence of such a database of sensitive information raises certain privacy concerns, particularly when law enforcement is reluctant to discuss the specifics of how it is being used to protect its investigative techniques. That being said, the Department of Homeland Security in the US has stated that the system is downloaded on law enforcement networks to prevent sharing to third parties and the data is not being shared to private parties.
Another issue with using this software is the potential inaccuracy of the match, especially with regard to children whose faces change as they age and where children photos are often not included as data sets to develop the algorithm.
Facial Recognition Moves onto a New Front: by David Elby
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/business/facial-recognition-schools.html
This recent article outlines the manner in which public schools have introduced facial recognition in Lockport NY for security purposes.
The public schools support the use of this software to identify persons of interests entering the schools including registered sex offenders in the area, ex-staff banned from the premises and other “credible threats.” It is also used to scan for and detect guns coming into the school.
If a person of interest were identified entering the school, this would send a signal to security personnel to potentially confirm the match and then to school administrators to take action.
If a gun were identified, both the police and the administrators would be notified and the police would directly respond if the administrators were not present to.
This system has recently been implemented after revising its privacy policy to protect student data but concerns remain due to false-identification. The system has been shown to have a racial bias and falsely identifies African Americans and Asian Americans 10 to 100 times more than Caucasians. The school also seeking to extend its list of persons of interest to include suspended students because most school shootings are committed by students. However, according to a law professor specialized in education and policy, this has been said to be problematic insofar as it places excessive scrutiny on such youth which could have a negative effect on them by making them more likely to enter the criminal justice system.