CCPA and Face Recognition to Ensure Personal Privacy
Face recognition will now act as a tool of enablement for protecting our freedoms and personal data rights.
Published first on Biometric Update
Data privacy is becoming an increasingly important topic as consumers recognize the risks to their personal information being rapidly collected and monetized without their knowledge. The introduction of the California Consumer Protection Act is the first piece of US legislation that empowers consumers with the ability to lawfully moderate how their personal data is collected, stored, used and possibly sold.
After years of public debate, face recognition is becoming a tool businesses can utilize to comply with these newly defined consumer rights. Do you ever wonder what happens to the video footage that is stored at a retailer or when you walk into your local grocery store? In California, individuals now have the ability to request this information along with other personally identifiable information which these businesses have collected, thus transitioning the torch of power to the consumer. In Europe, GDPR provides similar protection regarding personal information that has been collected, stored and sold. Fulfilling customer data requests in a timely manner becomes nearly impossible for enterprise businesses to handle with current tools; they would need to hire a team to sift through hours and days of data trying to locate a person and their associated information. With the power of face recognition, these data requests can be accomplished in seconds and in turn, increase consumer trust and sentiment with the business. The future of understanding how your data moves through an enterprise is through face recognition.
Face recognition will now act as a tool of enablement for protecting our freedoms and personal data rights. The efficiency of data extraction is paramount in this digital age and can cripple businesses who are ill-prepared. Imagine a situation where fifty people show up to the same retail store demanding they produce every bit of personal information that has been collected on them. It will significantly impact the store’s operational functionality and require an immediate diversion of resources. It’s the new age DDoS attack…
The only way businesses can protect themselves from the possibility of request overload is to have frictionless processes in place that can produce that information within seconds. Intelligent systems utilizing computer vision is an integral part of this solution.
By presenting the company who is using computer vision solutions with a single picture of themselves, the consumer can obtain a copy of their physical data in seconds (yes I understand the irony here). If requested by the consumer, another tool that can be leveraged is automated face blurring (redaction) after a recall. In order to maintain compliance with video storage, a business can search to find that individual then retrospectively blur their face in feeds.
As consumers demand more protection, technology will be the most efficient enforcer of these rights. When a serious crime is committed, law enforcement has begun to use facial recognition to aid in the search of perpetrators. In many cases, the use of face recognition has led to the quick apprehension and arrest of suspects. The intent of the technology is to be used as just one tool of many — an investigative aid, not surveillance. Face recognition should only be considered as one proof point amongst a compendium of other evidence. These types of tools should be used under strict guidance and enable more informed decisions. “To not use technology like this would be negligent. This is the future,” said Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea. “We are putting in place a system where there’s checks and balances to make sure we do our due diligence to make sure it’s a high probability the person who we are looking for.”
Security departments across California need to start preparing to implement tools for easy and programmatic video recall or they will spend millions of dollars trying to inefficiently locate footage of individuals requesting copies of their data. We are entering a world in which protection of personal data is of the utmost importance and the individual should have access to that data both in the physical and digital realm. By utilizing computer vision technology, companies can avoid their client information turning into a liability while at the same time increasing customer sentiment and loyalty.
Shaun Moore
