Facial Recognition, Is It Secure?

When you unlock your smartphone, you are pleased to have to show your face! You don’t need a password; remember a combination of numbers or a complicated geometric figure. You have to put the front camera in front of your head, and voila! That’s it! But is it secure?

Facial recognition for the police, a bad idea?

You have already seen in police investigation series, in action films, the CIA uses a facial recognition system. But we are not in fiction; this has now been a reality for quite a while! Granted, it might not be as deep as it is in Hollywood studios, but still.

This system has been able to help the police on numerous occasions to unmask criminals and fugitives since the cameras have detected them. But that poses ethical problems. Do ordinary people want to be filmed? What can they do with this data? What if the system is flawed and malicious people fall on it? Can we be confused? Too many questions, and not too many answers!

Scientists had fun doing some tests. In general, men are better listed than women. And it’s harder to spot people of colour for AI.

With this system, the police could even focus on people, and spy on them, although they have not committed any crime. Maybe they don’t even intend to do it. So, this stalking, good or bad idea?

With new technologies, this is gradually democratising, so what should we think of it?

Facebook, for example, uses this recognition; you may have noticed! When you take photos, it suggests friends to you even before putting them there. He’s rarely wrong, is he? It is used more and more in social networks!

Smartphone brands have decided to adopt this recognition for laptops now! Several questions still arise: what if we have twins? Does the phone unlock as well? The answer is yes! A test has been done, so we hope you have a good relationship with your twin, otherwise…. It will have free access to your smartphone and your privacy. Brilliant! As we age, our face changes. Will our mobile still be able to recognize us? What if the front camera doesn’t work anymore? What do you do? What if, what if…. We will stop there, but you have understood the principle!

LG, Honour, and OnePlus, offer fundamental facial recognition, but they can be easily deceived. Samsung offers an iris scanner on top of that. Still, the recognition is much slower. As for Apple, with its new iPhone X, it detects your face in 3D scanning and therefore considers the changes that your face undergoes with old age, the evolution of hairstyles, etc. We can therefore deduce that this system tends to become more efficient over the years, but it is still quite wobbly for the moment.

Other possible uses?

There are still some good things, like this PrimNet application, to identify specific species. This will allow these animals to be monitored without causing them any stress. A simple photo will suffice; there may no longer be a need to capture and tag them! Which is a good thing!

And you, what do you think of facial recognition? Do you feel more secure with it?