By Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer, RefTech
Facial recognition has hit the news this week, following the launch of the new iPhone X with facial recognition software to replace the thumbprint unlocking process. The events industry has already seen a few tech providers say that it will be used as part of the registration process and that it will replace the barcode scanner, so I thought I should take a look at the facts:
1. It isn’t reliable.
Even Apple couldn’t get it to unlock the new iPhone as promised, and that was demonstrated rather embarrassingly to over 1000 people and the worlds press this week! When police trialled it at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, it couldn’t even tell the difference between a young woman and a balding man.
2. It is slow.
The facial recognition systems I have seen take a fair amount of time to process each person. The technology used at airports for passport facial recognition is state of the art, but still slow. This system takes 30 seconds or more to process each person, which means that using one system at a conference would take over two hours to register and badge 300 delegates.
3. It impacts on your GDPR compliance.
The storing of biometric data will take your data into a special category when the GDPR comes into force next May. Biometric data is particularly sensitive personal data with increased conditions to control its storage and usage. GDPR is causing enough confusion without these extra conditions to consider. Even if the data is encoded and would never be able to be turned back into a picture it doesn’t actually matter. Under GDPR – any biometric data used to uniquely identify or confirm the identity of a person is special category data which will probably require the explicit consent of the delegate.
4. It really isn’t necessary
Facial recognition might be useful for an extremely high level security event – such as the G8 summit, but these events are few and far between. A bog-standard conference will never need that level of security – or be able to justify paying for it.
5. It’s a bit scary
There have also been many concerns about AI facial recognition being able to learn to recognise a person’s political stance, their sexuality and their propensity for crime. If this technology does gain traction, we will see human rights laws and conditions being applied to its use to ensure it can’t be used for discrimination. It’s a rather scary proposition and we may end up with a public backlash against facial recognition being used at all.
I’m bracing myself for the deluge of tech companies telling us that facial recognition will replace the barcode scanner at events, but to me the truth is as plain as the nose on my face…
