Abstract

New semi-autonomous technology enables agencies to identify individuals by their faces. My research question is: What is the impact of this Face Recognition Technology on privacy, and on autonomy generally, of citizens and their personal identifiable images? Do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and risks? My purpose is to review, examine and critique the ethical and legal circumstances as they are now developing. To this end I deploy a qualitative methodology to interrogate the literature and the growing evidence. A rigorous literature review focuses on the issues of personal liberty and surveillance from the discourses in ethics, law and sociology that are related to my hypothesis of privacy erosion by FRT. My broad conclusion is that in an increasingly data-dependent and concomitantly risk-averse society there is evidence that privacy is being eroded in the trade-off against national security. To balance this trade-off and to ameliorate the threat to privacy, the moral right to privacy needs to be more widely understood and examined. Ultimately, without adequate public accountability and transparency the FRT project will continue to diminish citizen autonomy, because public debate and approval is denied and therefore the majority in democratic western societies are likely to lose their understanding of, and their ability to control the use of their personal identifiable images in the form of digital data despite the impending EU General Data Protection Regulation.