Persuasive Essay On Facial Recognition Technology

In the twenty first century, everyone is gluing their eyes to bright screens, and keeping their minds and mouths shut. The public mindlessly releasing information through dangerous domains, like the Internet, poses a great issue. Citizens do not realize where their information can be used and why it is used. This unfortunate circumstance is seen in Peter Singer’s “Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets.” Although there is a sensation of isolation for the public in this century, there should still be a great amount of openness when it comes to social and political events that involve information, and the ways that data is collected for these purposes.

I concur with you on the use of biometrics by the government, and especially facial recognition to apprehend criminals. The recent rise in criminal cases can be halted if such a system is deployed. Biometrics can never go wrong and is in fact one of the most accurate ways of identifying people. If the government can be able to launch a system that can capture personal specifications, it can be really helpful.

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves”(Reagan). In the book, 1984, Winston recognizes the power the government has over the citizens of Oceania. The citizens lack privacy from the government. George Orwell warns society about a government with total control in 1984. Based on Dana Hawkin’s article, “Cheap Video Cameras Are Monitoring Our Every Move”, as well as Beech Etal’s, “The Other Side of the Great Firewall”, society may truly have something to fear in the form of surveillance and information manipulation.

It is quite obvious that a balance between both privacy and security is necessary to please both sides, yet steps to achieve this goal are not being made in the right direction. Privacy is about respecting individuals, however this level of respect is often lacking in many communities, George Orwell’s renowned novel 1984 explores this absence further. 1984 is an exaggerated representation of the extremes of privacy vs security, where the citizens are being constantly watched by the government, subsequently losing the little privacy they had. Much like Fahrenheit 451 and society today, in this dystopian novel people are watched even in their own home through telescreens by the omniscient leader known as Big Brother who controls everything, even the citizens’ language, and their history. These citizens do not even have freedom of thought.

As a growing topic of discussion, privacy in our society has stirred quite some concern. With the increase of technology and social networking our standards for privacy have been altered and the boundary between privacy and government has been blurred. In the article, Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets, Peter Singer addresses the different aspects of privacy that are being affected through the use of technology. The role of privacy in a democratic society is a tricky endeavor, however, each individual has a right to privacy. In our society, surveillance undermines privacy and without privacy there can be no democracy.

Developed in the 1960s, facial recognition technology has been used by the government and companies to identify people by matching them to photos. By 2001, the novelty of more powerful and rapid facial recognition technology grasped the public’s attention. During the January 2001 Super Bowl, surveillance cameras captured images of the crowd to find people with criminal records (FBI 2013). This potential invasion of privacy under the pretense of public safety sparked a public debate about the government taking private information from citizens. So what limitations should be put on the use of facial recognition software in America in order to keep the public feeling secure? In recent years, many companies who use this technology claim it is

Privacy is commonly defined as the act of being free from any form of surveillance or refers to a state of being in isolation, or a private place free from all unauthorized, or unlawful disturbance from others. In today’s ever-advancing society, it seems that this definition will soon need to be revised. Orwell in 1984 had conceived a society where personal privacy and space is never permitted. Every person under the party’s control is to be observed 24 hours, even by their own family members and friends. Privacy is a necessity for all humans, we mistakenly give other people too much power, as we continue to accept all types of new technology along with our growing need for stronger security. We are soon to find ourselves in

No longer do we live in an age where families socialize with one another face to face on a consistent basis with absolute privacy. In today’s society, technology has consumed most of our time leaving us zombified staring deep into the soul of a screen of some sort. In fact, you are doing just exactly that at this very moment. Privacy is no longer existent because little do people know, the screens they are staring into are staring right back. Our advancement in technology has without a doubt moved us a couple steps towards the world of Big Brother in the book 1984. However, we are still very distinct in the way in which we govern and use the data collected from our technology. .

The digital image of the face of a person can be matched against a record of other images by using face recognition software. In case that some of the images in the database go with the digitized image, the owner is reported about it by the system. Automatic face recognition has been studied and investigated extensively since 1990s and its usage is turning out to be no-nonsense in the present times. Although a number of automatic face recognition applications are relatively agreeable and harmless (access regulation to armaments, currency, illegal proof, nuclear equipment/supplies etc), there are still several dangers of face recognition systems that include violation of privacy and civil liberties, unrestrained exploitation, identity theft, illegal use of database, free access to personal data on social media etc. (Agre, 2001).

Proponents of this surveillance might ask, “If a person hasn’t done anything wrong, then why would they fear it?” However, one has to realize that, “this familiar claim ignores the fact that privacy is valuable not just to criminals, but to all of us” (Cole 2). When someone wishes to keep intimate information to him or herself, it is important for a civil society to respect those desires, regardless of any promise of nondisclosure. Doing this creates trust, further strengthening

Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.

Developed in the 1960s, facial recognition technology has been used by the government and companies to identify people by matching them to photos. The data for this software was originally entered manually, limiting the scope of use. By 2001, the novelty of more powerful facial recognition technology grasped the public’s attention. During the January 2001 Super Bowl, surveillance cameras captured images to find people with a criminal record (FBI 2013). This potential invasion of privacy under the pretense of public safety sparked a public debate about what private information the government was allowed to take from us. So should we be putting limitations on the use of facial recognition software in America in order to keep

Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.

It is important to note that the main applications of biometrics are utilized for preventing fraud and ensuring security. The use of biometrics has increased tremendously but so has social, ethical, privacy, practical and even political issues associated with it (Duquenoy, Jones & Blundell, 2008). Following is the detail regarding its ethical and privacy issue implications.

We live in a world today, in which technology moves at a very rapid pace. Many of these technological advances can be used to make our everyday lives easier and safer. One of these new technologies is Biometrics. Biometrics is the process of measuring a person’s physical properties. This would include measuring things like fingerprints, retinas, odor, vein structure on the back of the hand and many other things. Biometrics is a very important topic because it would create better security precautions for certain places that need to be secure. Biometrics will make our society safer by only allowing authorized people out of secure facilities and by keeping the unauthorized people out. Throughout the rest of this