Facial Recognition Technology: Ireland strays from the EU
Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee recently announced her intentions to implement Facial Recognition Technology or FRT for policing purposes. This proposal has come at a time when the ethics of FRT are a topic of international discussion. Implementing this technology has raised concerns over its potential use for mass surveillance and the violation of human rights.
But what is FRT? And how does Ireland align with the EU on using this technology?
What is Facial Recognition Technology?
Facial recognition technology is a biometric technology that detects, analyses, and identifies a face in photographs or a video. This is a powerful tool already used, not just to unlock your mobile, but also to scan the populace in search of one particular face. Certain countries around the world allow their law enforcement to make use of FRT, to varying extents.
The creation process for FRT typically starts by detecting a face, then analysing its details, and finally, identifying the face.
An algorithm is fed an extensive database of faces by the creator, done to “teach” the algorithm what precisely a face is. Additionally, further algorithms are added to analyse and then recognise faces, resulting in a fully functioning FRT.
Criticisms
How FRT is taught, has resulted in controversy. As FRT algorithms targeted faces that they found hard to identify, due to the typology of faces in their databases.
Databases had included too much of one type of face (ethnicity), resulting in FRT algorithms unfairly targeting minority groups.
Civil liberty groups have endeavoured to make this information public, resulting in efforts to ensure the databases include a diverse range of faces.
However, regardless of this issue, the problem of our right to privacy is not.
FRT relies on the mass surveillance of the population to accurately identify any suspects in question. Granted, CCTV already surveys the populace day-to-day, but the difference with FRT is that it identifies without consent.
A factor which many consider a breach of our human rights.
Ireland and the EU
Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, announced that her department is drawing up legislation to allow Ireland’s An Garda Siochana (the police force) to use FRT to identify people in real-time.
The Minister stated the technology would be reserved for severe crimes and missing persons cases only, saving countless hours scouring CCTV footage.
However, the mentioned issues have been raised by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), which “strongly opposes” the technology’s use by “law enforcement and in public spaces”. The ICCL has argued that FRT violates several human rights, such as the right to privacy, data protection, assembly, and equality. They have stated that they stand opposed to FRT alongside 170 other civil society organisations.
Furthermore, the ICCL noted that the EU is moving in the opposite direction of Ireland. Meaning the Minister’s pro-FRT policy has come at a time when Ireland will soon be subject to the EU Commission’s European AI regulatory framework. This policy will introduce legislation to heavily regulate AI technology, including FRT, ensuring that AI will “respect the existing law on fundamental human rights.”
The attitude within the European parliament reinforced this, as MEPs voted to ban the use of FRT by law enforcement and public spaces in 2021. More recently voted to accept the final recommendations of the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA). While they recognised the useful nature of AI, MEPs also recognised the potential threats which AI technologies (such as FRT) propose, calling on the EU to “safeguard fundamental rights”.
Moving forward
AI technologies are already in use in the modern world and are likely to continue being altered, upgraded, and implemented into day-to-day life. So, ensuring that this is done ethically, is of the utmost importance. Scepticism surrounding new technologies set to have large impacts on wider society should always be encouraged as healthy, especially in an age where autocracy exists. The potential abuse of FRT is apparent, but also it's potential to do good.
However, when human rights are threatened, ideas need to be reassessed and reconsidered, not rushed.
