This technology should be illegal

Why?

and the databases containing the facial/biometric data seized and destroyed.

What would that do?

Edit: To everyone just downvoting me. Give me a reason. I’m asking these questions for a reason.

Edit 2: you know what? Screw it.

Making it illegal would do nothing. You already have a tracker in your pocket that’s far more invasive and far more reaching. It knows what you do at night, where you go ALL DAY, who you talk to, what you talk about, which websites you visit, the kind of kinks you have, etc.

Banning FR would be like banning cars. Yes, it would literally save lives if we banned cars, but are you going to advocate for that? No, you won’t. And that also ignores the literal hundreds of millions of people that safely drive around each and every day.

It’s the same for FR. Believe it or not, it’s used everywhere and everyday successfully. You just don’t hear about the hundreds of millions of successful scans because that’s not catchy news.

Out of the handful of stories we hear in the news about people being wrongfully arrested “because of facial recognition”, there are many millions that don’t. And let’s be clear here, this isn’t a problem with FR, as these systems perform consistently better (the data is there to prove it) than the best humans at recognition faces, it’s a problem with using the system wrong or a massive policy problem at the departments using it.

Another thing is that FR is rather limited. It can scan you, sure, but it can only do so where the cameras are set up and where you personally are put into the database. So we’re talking a store or a property.

But it won’t know what you’re talking about, where you go at night, how long you spend at a friend’s house, what your political views are, what your online searches are, or anything that really matters. Your cellphone will.

And deleting the biometric databases is pointless. If you have a picture somewhere on the internet, then your biometric data is out there. The model representation of your face that these systems create are not special and not compatible with literally every single other FR system in the world. FR is an umbrella term for an end goal, not a methodology or algorithm. There’s nothing to steal. Literally nothing. If a hacker did get their hands on the database, there’s nothing they could do with the model data. If they did have access to a FR system, they would need to regenerate the models from the photos anyways, because the systems aren’t compatible. And it’s incredibly trivial to do anyways.

Your “biometric data” is a photo of your face. You want to protect it? Then don’t post a single photo of yourself anywhere ever.

If you really want to complain about real invasion of privacy? Start with Google, Facebook, ad trackers, and your cellphone.

FR may be creepy, but it’s not the invasion of privacy that it’s been made out to be. I’m not saying it isn’t a privacy concern, but I am saying people are getting disproportionately upset by it compared to other things that already exist and are worse.