While you walking in the streets, or using smart phones, your facial and vocal information is collected by the camera above your head and the microphone on the bottom of the phone. Facial recognition has gained fierce discussion recently in China, always followed with ridiculous news like “Family Carries Paralyzed Old Man on Stretcher to Bank for Facial Recognition Authentication” “ ALERT! These apps are stealing your facial data…..”, etc. People are concerned about the widespread use of facial recognition, while smart phones and payment apps are all using facial recognition as the confirm-act method. What’s more, during the COVID-19 pandemic, facial recognition technology was also used for public health surveillance. In the workplace, facial recognition technology has been used to detect employees with fever and ensure that they wear masks. In Russia, surveillance cameras with facial recognition can monitor people who are isolated or who are self-isolated. In China, facial recognition technology is used to scan a crowd for signs of fever and can be used to identify people while wearing masks.
We can see that facial recognition nowadays is working in 2 areas: government public services and commercial consumer area. The latter is now the bigger market for facial recognition. Facial recognition is replacing various forms of old technology. For example, it replaces password or fingerprint in the field of cell phone unlocking, replaces the operation of third-party payment accounts in the field of payments, and replaces the traditional access card technology in the case of access to your apartment. However, in business scenarios, the suppliers of facial recognition technology have different technical capabilities, among which high-volume suppliers do not have the ability to develop facial recognition technology from the ground up, but only procure the corresponding SDK package through the upstream. Without the technical capability itself, there is no way to protect the security of user data. So large amount of data owned by these suppliers is in huge risk.
During this process, the private tech firms are also trying to embed their rules, their standards within the digital technical infrastructure. This indicate that the power is embed in the technical issues. Power is in rule setting, in standard setting.
This phenomenon has gradually been noted by the authorities. The “Personal Information Protection Law (Draft)” is closed for public comment process on November 19, which means the law enforcement is around the corner. This law makes provisions regarding facial recognition. The same, regulations put upon tech corporations gradually enact. Especially in China, in the economic system of government intervention to regulate the market, this power shift is inevitable, but here also comes a more dynamic convergence of technology, politic and economics.
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