I understand your point about the responsibility of a democracy but I do worry about the tech, I would also be alarmed if someone developed a biological weapon to extinct humanity, even if the usage was controlled by a democratic mechanism. Just dont develop such dangerous technologies with no positive use case. Dangerous being the combination of efficiency and scale-ability.
The argument also assumes that we will continue have democratic systems and the population not voting for such systems to be implemented. The reality is what ever means and information we currently entrust to governments later versions will also have access to. Not to mention the export of these technologies to "friendly" dictatorships. Its the old problem of census data in the Netherlands. They had extremely detailed census data involving peoples religious beliefs before the Nazis invaded and with the data available the persecution of Jews was extremely efficient. The resistance targeted the locations of these datasets but it didnt work good enough.
I also dont see how international borders need anything more then fingerprints. They are also far more accurate and reliable. Facial recognition has the only added benefit of being usable without the effected people noticing. Thats not a positive characteristic.
To come back to the central argument, we do already have other means of identifying people and facial recognition only differs in a few core issues from existing mechanics. The core characteristics of facial recognition are
* No need for a cooperative, consenting subject
* Not alerting the subject being identified and no protection against being identified without noticing
* Unchangeable identification characteristic
We already have reliable easy to use systems for characteristic 1 and 3, fingerprints, and I see how there might be a need for such systems at specific locations. For example at a police station or border checkpoints.
Then we have facial recognition which is a lot less accurate and its only additional benefit is point 2. Point 2 however has no positive use cases, its a purely totalitarian instrument aimed at its scale-ability. For not only being used in specific places but everywhere. You cant even make the argument which makes nuclear weapons a worthwhile technology to have, the possible usage for war against a foreign aggressor. Facial recognition is only beneficial to keep a population suppressed.
The argument also assumes that we will continue have democratic systems and the population not voting for such systems to be implemented. The reality is what ever means and information we currently entrust to governments later versions will also have access to. Not to mention the export of these technologies to "friendly" dictatorships. Its the old problem of census data in the Netherlands. They had extremely detailed census data involving peoples religious beliefs before the Nazis invaded and with the data available the persecution of Jews was extremely efficient. The resistance targeted the locations of these datasets but it didnt work good enough.
I also dont see how international borders need anything more then fingerprints. They are also far more accurate and reliable. Facial recognition has the only added benefit of being usable without the effected people noticing. Thats not a positive characteristic.
To come back to the central argument, we do already have other means of identifying people and facial recognition only differs in a few core issues from existing mechanics. The core characteristics of facial recognition are
* No need for a cooperative, consenting subject
* Not alerting the subject being identified and no protection against being identified without noticing
* Unchangeable identification characteristic
We already have reliable easy to use systems for characteristic 1 and 3, fingerprints, and I see how there might be a need for such systems at specific locations. For example at a police station or border checkpoints.
Then we have facial recognition which is a lot less accurate and its only additional benefit is point 2. Point 2 however has no positive use cases, its a purely totalitarian instrument aimed at its scale-ability. For not only being used in specific places but everywhere. You cant even make the argument which makes nuclear weapons a worthwhile technology to have, the possible usage for war against a foreign aggressor. Facial recognition is only beneficial to keep a population suppressed.