SciFi novelist Jon Wallace explores the threat of facial recognition technology
To most, engineering still evokes the best parts of humanity: curiosity; adaptability; doggedness. It’s that which allows us to apply our restless spirit to noble pursuits: shaping the landscape, augmenting our impressive natural senses, and consolidating our dominion of the Earth. For many, engineering advances are the measure by which we mark our species’ progress.
Still, every now and then, a story crops up in The Engineer’s news feed that might seem contrary to this spirit of enlightened advance. The effort to perfect facial recognition technology by Bristol Robotics Laboratory’s Centre for Machine Vision is one such. “Our 3D solution provides pinpoint accuracy,” boasts a spokesperson. “For national or high security… our solution provides an extra layer of confidence.”
Indeed, what utility has the technology for augmenting the already considerable arsenals of state surveillance and marketeers? There is something seedy about it. At least the fingerprint has the benefit of imminence – when the border guard at JFK tells you to present your thumbprint you are, like it or not, wilfully participating. The facial recognition scan, on the other hand, is designed to occur without consent: where CCTV can be said to monitor a particular area, facial recognition monitors us. A fingerprint is the smudge we leave on the world, whereas the scan smears us all.
The Facebook age
Perhaps we should get used to it. In the Facebook age we’ve all mortgaged our features to some extent. But to the scifi author, facial recognition throws up some troubling questions. After all, our face is our flag, our uniqueness in the crowd. Altering it has the potential to make other people of us; and there comes the opportunity for story.
Faces have a crucial role establishing the world of scifi stories: the smallest prosthetic bumps and ridges suffice to suspend our disbelief in a Star Trek universe of humanoid aliens; a mere pair of glasses is enough to bamboozle Clark Kent’s co-workers. When scifi counterfeits a human face poorly, with uncanny CGI (Leia in Rogue One) or dodgy make-up (‘old’ Peter Weyland in Prometheus) it can throw the audience out of the drama completely.
The face is also integral to establishing characters: In tales such as Robocop and Ex Machina, it is the face that allows viewers to connect with robot protagonists. Disfigurement, particularly in comic-book tales, is the defining instrument of The Joker, Darkman and Deadpool’s transformation into something beyond human.
A technology that captures, maps and logs our faces, therefore, doesn’t inspire the most optimistic visions. Like the mobile telephone, it narrows a writer’s options: Superman’s secret identity would hardly pass muster in the age of ‘machine vision’. We can only imagine how future marketeers will deploy this technology, accumulating facial data to build an ever-more-complete picture of consumers – and harangue them more efficiently. A face easily mapped is a face easily reproduced, and a future of adverts incorporating our own features cannot be
far away: uncanny CGI doppelgangers projected online and in the street, showing us better version of ourselves, driving sports cars on mountain roads or brushing with new Gleemodent.
Who knows, society may fight back: we could set a story in a world where a new craze emerges in big cities: to wear 3D-printed masks of those that would steal and sell our likenesses; the Murdochs, Saatchis and Maybots of the future. One man has a particular fondness for masking up as the President. This draws winks and nods in the city, but on a trip to the countryside, where the practice is unknown, he is mistaken for the real thing and assassinated.
Governments would have something to say about masking up: there is something subversive about covering the face – as Mr Robot and V for Vendetta show – and governments could outlaw the mask, citing the notion that a revealed face is part of the social contract. But the fight could go on: new clans form, using jewellery, prosthetics and chin-length ‘super-hippy’ hair to confuse and scatter facial recognition scans. We could tell the tale of two super hippies who find love: unwilling to reveal their features, they show their affection by tying intricate knots in each other’s locks.
What might the mapping and printing of faces mean for relationships? Could robots be masked up as lost or unrequited loves? Or used for more nefarious schemes? A story could follow a Hollywood actor who murders her actor husband. Attempting to cover her tracks, she masks up a robot to accompany her to premieres. She fears the robot’s speech is too wooden to pass muster, so is stunned when his career takes off. Whatever facial recognition takes us, we have to ask: if technology makes people hide, can it really be progress?
Jon Wallace is a science fiction author living in England. He is the author of Barricade, published by Gollancz
I strongly disagree with the content of this article. Facial recognition is a tool, that is all it will ever be. If someone needs to hide his/her face from the government, what is it they are up to that they should have fear? The tool can be used to find criminals, prevent entry into various countries by criminals, murderers, etc. I think it is a tool whose time has come.
“Who checks the checkers?”
I’ve known twins who are so alike I couldn’t tell them apart. And it’s not unknown for the parents to have a similar problem.
I have grandsons who would fit Paul K’s criteria exactly. Seriously, for the 95% of all populations who have little or nothing to hide from any government or employer or police force (as long as it is legitimately ‘elected’) hence my comment above, …where is the problem? The other 5% are from the water margins, are the cause of most of human advance, and because of this are ‘persons of interest’ to the authorities. Hiding behind another persona? I gather that one of the reasons lawyers still go to work in fancy dress is so that they will not be recognised in the street and ‘duffed-up’ by those they have prosecuted or misused? Wearing a uniform surely requires individuals to become so: thence their personalities and facial characteristics are eventually identical. Isn’t that what those at the summit of most organisations and authorities want: it makes those ‘below’ so much easier to control: and control is what its all about. Well, isn’t it!
Just a tool, indeed, Mr Stewart? When you can no longer walk privately on any street/place with such a device, when when your whereabouts are logged by such devices, makes me feel very uncomfortable as to my rightful privacy. The pat answer of the State would be much like yours–“if you have nothing to hide, why do you mind us tracking you for no particular reaso n?” Doesn’t it make you feel a teeny bit worried as to why such a proposal is needed in our “free” society. Do I feel the shadow of “Big Brother” peering from that device on the wall?
This is another nail in the coffin of civil liberties. If you have nothing to hide why object. How long before we are bar coded when born. I have a tracker on my motorbike just in case it is stolen. The app on my smart phone allows me to trace it and if stolen I can get together with a few friends and go and get it back, Lord help the little sod who stole it. How long before we have a chip implanted at birth, similar to the chips in our pets, that will allow GCHQ to track us at all times? Technology is advancing at a pace that should frighten us. If every body had a chip implanted. It would be very easy for the powers that be to identify all the remains in the Tower. Maybe i’m becoming more of a ludite as I get older but I still worry about the direction of the so called “progress” we are landing our children with. Ah well that’s progress, like it or loath it, we are all stuck with it.