Colloquium: The Case Against Facial Recognition

19 May 2021

Colloquium by Prof. Dr. Woodrow Hartzog (Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA)

Wednesday, 19 May 2021 18:00, Webinar

Abstract: Facial recognition technologies are the most dangerous surveillance tools ever invented. Governments find them irresistible as tools to control the population. Industry is using them to categorize your emotions and identity and infer your shopping and social habits and fitness for employment. Individuals are already using them to harass and stalk other people. Facial recognition is, in short, a near perfect tool of oppression.

Yet there is no consensus about how lawmakers should regulate these tools. Some have recommended imposing the standard proceduralist obligations on actors to get consent or a search warrant before using them. Other have recommended imposing substantive limits on when facial recognition data can be collected and narrowing contexts where that data can be put to use. All of these efforts are doomed to fail. In this talk, Professor Hartzog makes the case against facial recognition and the legal frameworks that allow it to thrive. That there is no future involving facial recognition in which people, as a whole, will be better off. We must demand more to ensure our ability to thrive as individuals, our collective wellbeing, and the health of our public institutions.

Woodrow Hartzog is a Professor of Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University School of Law and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a Non-resident Fellow at The Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine & Law at Washington University, and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. He is the author of Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies, published in 2018 by Harvard University Press and the co-author of Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It, under contract with Oxford University Press.

Please visit the Taming the Machines Lectures website to register for the Webinar.