When Facebook rolled out the ability to tag your friends in your photo album, everyone I knew spent hours identifiying every face in their photo albums. It seemed fun and innocent. It become even more convenient when Facebook upgraded to automatically identifying and recommend tags. The recognition has become so good that Facebook will now update you when photos of you are uploaded to the site even without you being tagged (to hopefuly stop your images from being used by a catfish).
But somewhere along the line it has all started to feel very invasive. Almost anyone's face is now "known" by the internet. And with the ever increasing amount of facial recognition software making its way into government hands the ethical ramifications are no longer a thought experiment, but are having real life consiquences.
Amnisty international is looking at the roll European tech companies may have played in providing survalince technologies to those who would violate human right's around the globe. The chinese government has used survaliance to enforce its lockdowns during the current pandemic.
Given the success of such technologies to control a population, serious consideration needs to be given by companies about their social responsiblity to the larger social implications that their technology can inflict. The roll out of Chinese investment around the world in similar government surveillance programs is an uneasy development. Buyers of such technology have appeared to be those looking to control, rather then enhance the lives of its populations.
Technology companies, and governments need to act now if they wish to have any hope of installing safegaurds to protect human right's around the world.
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