ClearviewAI: A Faustian Tale?

In Anna Burns Booker-Prize winning novel, "The Milkman" set in the 70s Belfast during "The Troubles" , we see our protagonist(whose name we never learn,just like all the other characters in the book and for good reason, as this is an universal story), an 18 year old young woman, jogging in the local neighborhood park, when she hears the constant click of cameras coming from behind the bushes in the park. She understands that she's being photographed by the resistance- to maintain their dossier on her. Her crime? She had been earlier approached by a creepy old "Milkman", who amongst other things has links with the paramilitary.

Cut to our modern era, and we don't even need clandestine informers taking secretive pictures hiding behind bushes. CCTV cameras are as ubiquitous a feature of our modern life as thousands of inane pictures of ours on social media. They are everywhere - capturing every frame of our life as we go about our business. Add to that a pliant social media company willing to share it's users data without their explicit consent(after all, that's what fine print consent is all about), and a facial recognition system capable of recognizing people in the CCTV footage( using the trove of social media data with sufficient accuracy)and you have a system of mass surveillance in place. All this without proper legislation about who, when and how should have access to this data and software.

That is not to say that Facial recognition software doesn't have it's uses. And that's why it's imperative that necessary legislation be made so that it's usage is safe and secure - often from the same authorities, without infringing upon the rights of privacy of ordinary individuals. The historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book "Homo Deus" writes that "..States often feel obliged to react to the theatre of terrorism with a show of security, orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire populations or the invasion of foreign countries. In most cases, this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than the terrorists themselves." It's time, we have a wider discussion on the use of CCTV footage, social media data & facial recognition software before it becomes Frankenstein's monster.

https://www.dw.com/en/hundreds-of-us-police-departments-using-dystopian-face-recognition-app-report/a-52054957