No one is saying this system should flag people in cameras and send the kill drones to eliminate targets or send robocops to make arrests.
But if we have a reliable percentage that won't create too many false positives that can alert polices if a suspect is seen on a camera so that they would start the investigation, what is wrong with that?
In terms of technology, yes. In terms of civil liberties, no.
I predict a lot of cities and countries will follow suit and start banning facial recognition technology altogether. If not then we're screwed. I already avoid traveling to the UK for the insane privacy invasion of their CCTV system. I get that there are benefits for crime investigation but it's far from worth it, the whole concept feels incredibly surreal (and wrong) to me.
Edit: To further your point, even if fingerprints were 100% accurate, there's still the off chance that someone planted your fingerprints. And someone could be wearing a you-mask, so you cannot rely on fingerprints or facial recognition for waterproof evidence. Which is why proper trials require multiple sources of evidence (I hope - IANAL).
I think the invasion of privacy is a trade off. One day we will have the technology and capability for doing large scale accurate facial recognition and I would gladly take that if that means greatly reducing crimes.
The question is if we can do this without the people in charge abusing or not. If we can guarantee that it will be only being used for catching people with arrest warrant then I would have no problem with increasing the efficiency of cops
I agree to disagree with it being an acceptable trade-off.
> The question is if we can do this without the people in charge abusing or not.
I think this is the main question and goes hand in hand with whether governments should be able to decrypt the internet.
Please let me move around freely, meet the people I want to meet, without having me added to some database of people with suspect contacts. I am fine with granting "criminals" the same privileges (as I posted in a comment yesterday[0] I am definitely a criminal, given the definition of the word).
You start with cameras everywhere for facial recognition, then you add microphones... it's hard to encrypt real-life discussion without inventing a new language, which could be easily decrypted anyways.
Systematically exposing the information that you were at place X at time Y is already a huge privacy violation. You can bet it will not only be used for that (immediately dispatching police forces) but in due time it will become the norm for countless other “less harmful” uses in the interest of whoever controls the apparatus (government, lobbies, industry): collection agencies, private investigators, myriad profiling ventures, and yes, advertising. We’ve been warned.
The driving force behind this change and the protests at large is that American police are currently indistinguishable from kill drones if your skin isn’t white.
But if we have a reliable percentage that won't create too many false positives that can alert polices if a suspect is seen on a camera so that they would start the investigation, what is wrong with that?