No more checking in: why public facial recognition may take off
We all know that processing power has for many years increased exponentially and continues to do so. This essentially means that any processing-intensive task you can imagine will eventually be possible.
Facial recognition happens to be a task that humans are hard-wired to be exceptionally good at. While computers struggled at this for a long time, it is now an entirely viable technology in controlled conditions, as when people are walking through turnstiles or gates.
The facial recognition used at the 2001 Super Bowl was successful enough to apparently nab 19 people with pending arrest warrants, while facial recognition is now commonly used in border security.
It becomes a lot harder when people’s faces are not viewed from the front, however to a large degree that’s where the increased processing power comes in handy.
Mark Cuban says that he has just invested in a company that uses video to identify how many people are in a given area, which can be useful for safety, security, and traffic control.
He says the next step is to use this technology for facial recognition. Of course there will be a massive outcry over privacy, so any such systems is likely to be opt-in (you actively choose to be identified rather than having to take action to opt-out).
However there is a very interesting precedent. After many years of trying to get location-based social networks going, over the last couple of years Foursquare and Gowalla have been growing at an extraordinary pace, and Facebook apparently due to join the fun very soon.
These systems allow people to share their location with a select group of friends. Implicitly there is confidence in the service provider to be treating this information appropriately and maintaining solid security.
Many of the power users of using location based social networks such as Foursquare are getting tired of checking in whenever they get to a new place. It is likely that a fair proportion of these people, if presented with an intelligently designed offer to securely identify their location as they go about, would accept it.
They may even be happy to occasionally accept commercial offers, leading to a scenario similar to Minority Report, where biometric analysis results in truly personalized advertising.
Of course almost everyone may shy completely away from automated tracking by facial recognition. But as we explore our relationship with technology and privacy, this is certainly one route by which people could grow to accept or even embrace facial recognition.
