M2SYS, made very subtle observation on the article:
In other words, "How come no pitchforks?"
He's right. New technology is often feared. In the case of biometrics, there have been those who have seen fit to feed that fear. Biometrics' association with security, and hence, authority would seem to put it right in the nexus between fear and fearmongering. Furthermore, the article's author chose examples of facial recognition applications that have gotten a lot of public attention and might be considered avant-garde to say the least. But so far, most public reaction seems to come somewhere between "cool" (Scene Tap), "that was dumb" (Facebook), or "about time" (London riots). Public comment has been rather moderate and even in tone. What gives?
I think there are several reasons why new facial recognition deployments are rarely met with scorn. Some are related to what it means deep-down to be human, and some are more practical.
♦ Except in a very narrow sense and among a very few cultures, a face is not, nor has it ever been, considered private. In the vast majority of times, places and cultures it has (like "name") always served as a proxy for an individual public identity. This fact is embedded in languages and useage all over the world. "He can't show his face around here anymore." "She really lost face." "They tried to save face."
♦ It's also probable that the vast majority of people intuitively understand the difference between privacy and anonymity. Privacy is the ability to keep things about yourself secret. Anonymity means "without a name". Privacy is a time-honored value that is nearly universal in city-building societies. Anonymity, freeing one from public scorn for one's non-private actions, has probably only been accessible to the masses in the relatively narrow space between the industrial revolution (that enabled rapid transit and the megalopolis) and the information age which seems to be making anonymity much harder.
♦ Marketers aren't stupid. When interractions aren't strictly voluntary, anonymity can act as a salve and biometrics can improve the efficacy and customer experience of marketing. Marketers know this and in a competitive marketplace the cost of mistakes is high. [After I've read it as well, and assuming the Phillip K. Dick story is similar to the movie, I'll write a detailed piece on how those who use Minority Report to say anything serious about biometrics profoundly misunderstand both Minority Report and biometrics. In the movie, the advertising posters were calling the name of John Anderton's eyeballs' former owner. Not only did this make the ads useless, it was also super-annoying to John Anderton. I would never go in a store where that happened and I doubt I'm alone.] The type of technology driving the variable ads is nothing like Minority Report. In fact, it's not really face recognition in the first place. It's really more demographic (in the marketing sense) recognition. It's non-individual (anonamous even) which is what makes demographics useful. And it's helpful. Even without biometrics, I see fewer ads for products I am not in the market for. Now if biometrics can just do something about all the perscription drug and trial lawyer commercials, I'm all for it.
♦ There have been no high-pofile victims of facial recognition gone awry — not that there won't be. It's easy to imagine that someone in a witness protection program or a high-value political defector might be tracked down and murdered in part using a facial recognition dragnet. Those people may want to swing by the CV Dazzle site for some face-rec-beating fashion tips. But it hasn't happened yet.
♦ Last (for now) but not least: After 9/11 there was a lot of overpromising an underdelivering about biometrics. A lot of money changed hands and a lot of people got egg on their faces. Still, they say "it's an ill wind that blows no good." The up-side of this bad history is that the public has had ten years to get used to the idea of what facial recognition applications are only just now begining to deliver. I think there's a sense among the public, at least on the security side, of: "I thought they were doing that already."
