Our Faces Are Replacing Alphanumeric Passwords. We Should All Be Worried.
It is as if facial recognition will soon replace alphanumeric passwords, and we should be all worried about this.
Humanity without passwords
I’m not a big fan of passwords. I always forget them, and I agonize at the idea of having to remember the answer to the “secret question” that I, alone, am supposed to know, but don’t. Or, what about being logged out for a finite amount of time from your own account because you typed the wrong password too many times? The worst feeling, I admit. And I am not alone in this predicament.
But, our brilliant technological savants came with the solution to our plight: using our faces as passwords. With such advancement, there is no need to remember lengthy alphanumeric passwords. Just a glance at a screen, et voila, you have access to all your precious personal affairs. It comes to no surprise that Apple and Samsung have made facial recognition a primary feature of their most recent smartphones.
Hence why, wherever and whenever we turn our attention to, there seems to be a headline about the advancement of facial recognition software and how it is supposed to improve our lives by strengthening national and local security, in addition to reducing waiting lines.
For instance, let’s take the Tokyo 2020 Olympic committee as an example. It recently announced that it will be using facial recognition to reduce congestions at accredited waiting lines, thus making logistics easier, safer, labor-free, and overall, more manageable. Using such approach to identification, according to the committee, would eventually dwindle down the anxiety that athletes feel under the hot weather.
Moreover, here in America, the Mineta San Jose airport made headlines a few weeks ago for being the first airport to use facial recognition to identify travelers when they enter and exit the country by comparing their faces to that of their passports, which already are in a database. Since the implementation of said-technology, the airport reduced average line time from 25 minutes to 21 minutes, a whole 4 minutes.
In addition, a newly implemented Travel Verification Service is spawning across American airports. It allows passengers to board their flights without a paper ticket or without the use of an airline app. Their faces become their boarding passes as they step up to the gates and get their faces scanned by a sophisticated biometric scanner.
While in Asia, a Chinese online retailer opened a high-tech store, similarly to the Amazon Go store in Seattle, in which customers would simply walk in, grab what they want and leave without paying. Facial recognition and AI handle the rest of the checkout process. Consequently, reducing shoplifting, and once again, eliminating checkout lines effectively.
A perfect world…right?
All of these sound awesome and innocuous, to say the least. We are heading to a world in which we will never and ever wait in line. A world in which we will be card-less. We will never to create or be stifled by the most absurd password with the most intricated rule combinations which must include 8–12 character long, with one capital letter, one number, one special character, cannot be a common name or entity and the requirements go on and on.
At this rate, we won’t even need a driving license or any type identification cards, per say.
Our faces will be the key to our lives. They will be the codes to our bank accounts, and the keys to our homes and cars. Our keys will never be lost, no more locked keys in our cars.
But…
My apologies if I sound a bit paranoid, and even skeptical about all this fuzz. I cannot help myself but ask how far we are willing to give away our humanity for the cause of efficiency.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a plethora of pros to facial recognition, but are we deliberately inviting corporations, government entities, and hackers into our personal lives without flinching and questioning their motives regardless of humble they may be? Let’s remember, in such world, our faces would be the master key to everything we cherish. One access to the biometric formation of our faces could open the door to a more pervasive identity-thieving process.
While alphanumeric passwords can be changed; our biometrics features such as our fingerprints and faces cannot. It is, therefore, oddly troubling how we have always been told not to use a single password for everything that requires one and to change them regularly, yet we’re willing to allow our faces to be the ultimate door to our finances.
The issue is not the technology per say, but what happens when they are in the wrong hands?How long does such privy information is kept? Who get access to them? And we can all agree that there is no such thing as an un-hackable tool.
Why It matters…
Lest we also forget that facial recognition is currently stymied by biases and inaccuracies. Indeed, a study by Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist at MIT, reveals that facial recognition algorithms fail more frequently in identifying people of color. If you’re a white man, the software is right 99 percent of the time. If you happen to be of a darker skin, errors rate may rise to 35 percent. This is quite worrisome.
Law enforcement across the country are now using facial recognition software with AI to track people by their physical traits rather than monitoring their possessions such as smartphones. Although, this reduce labor costs and increase efficiency, illegal tracking of people of colors, immigrants, and civil societies is bound to occur more perversely than ever before.
Let’s take for example the N.Y.P.D which recently settled a lawsuit after being caught tracking Muslim-Americans by eavesdropping on conversations in cafes, asking Muslims about their views on drone strikes, collecting license plates, and videotaping mosques’ entrances, all manually, which required a great deal of labor. With facial recognition, the N.Y.P.D could have been able to track these Muslims-Americans at a much more manageable rate, more perversely, and perhaps would have not been caught.
Considering that the current White House is planning to undertake long-term surveillance of Muslims, and has increased its financial investments to the advancement of AI, it is a matter of time before lawsuits start rolling due to abused and a constitutional crisis to occur.
Technology is also moving at a much faster pace that the law is permitting. We don’t expect to be searched without a warrant. But based on the state of the current legal system, facial recognition is allowing such search to ensue with no ramification as there are no laws and guidelines to prevent the misuse of facial data. Abuse is, therefore, bound to occur.
Our technophilic attitude to facial recognition is admirable and our grit to attain new heights to scientific knowledge is commendable. It is the curiosity of scientists that have made this world secure, healthier, and more connected than ever before.
Yet, are we justifying using a new technology just because we can identify a few benefits while losing sight of some sweeping dangers? Should we not have a more significant conversation about the legality and security of facial recognition? Or, am I just a technophobe? Let me know what you think.
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