Your face: Our acceptance of facial recognition technology depends on who does it and where.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Although facial recognition technology is becoming more widely used, acceptance by the general public has not yet spread.
Controversy continues in the media, with organizations in both the public and private sectors frequently being accused of flaws in technology implementation.
New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner is currently assessing the results of a trial of live facial recognition in stores by retailer Foodstuff North Island.
The commissioner is also considering potential codes on the use of biometrics, which would govern the use of people’s unique physical characteristics to identify them.
However, as facial recognition has become more commonplace, public acceptance of this technology has been inconsistent.
For example, retailers tend to create controversy when using facial recognition technology. However, there was little resistance to using it at the airport. And the majority of people have no problem unlocking their phone using their face.
My research brings together 15 studies on public acceptance of facial recognition technology in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.
There has been little analysis of New Zealand attitudes towards this technology. Therefore, these studies provide a view on how it is received in similar countries.
What I discovered was that the public acceptance of facial recognition technology depends on where it was recorded and why it was recorded.
trust for personal use
Global research shows that individuals are more likely to trust facial recognition technology on their smartphones.
A 2019 study in the US found that 58.9% of people were uncomfortable using facial recognition to unlock their smartphones. And a 2024 survey found 68.8% of Australians feel the same way.
This is interesting. Although individuals physically “control” technology through apps on their phones, they have no control over the apps themselves or the data they collect.
Therefore, acceptance is a product of perception. Using facial recognition technology on your phone makes you feel in control.
Declining trust in government
Public acceptance of government use of facial recognition varies widely depending on its intended use.
The more familiar people are with a particular technology, the higher their level of acceptance of that technology.
For example, people were resistant to the government’s use of facial recognition to identify passengers at airport customs. But they weren’t too happy about it being used to identify voters at polling stations.
Regarding the adoption of facial recognition technology by police, people generally accepted the use of facial recognition technology to identify terrorists and investigate serious crimes. However, the research found there was resistance to using this information to identify minor offenses and anti-social behavior, such as parking violations and littering.
People were also uncomfortable with the idea of it being used in court to obtain convictions in the absence of other forms of evidence.
The more ambiguous the use of technology, the greater the discomfort others feel with it.
Developments such as “surveillance of crowds walking down the street” and “routine security” are a combination of ubiquitous surveillance and “virtual anonymity” (even in public places, one has the right to act). This leads to concerns about the loss of the concept of some degree of privacy).
Be wary of private companies
Public acceptance of government facial recognition technology may have been mixed, but it has generally been better than that of the private sector.
People have little trust in companies to operate technology responsibly.
A 2024 survey by the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner found that 49% of respondents said they were concerned or very concerned about the use of facial recognition technology in stores.
But as the acceptability data for government use showed, context is key.
Research focused on the retail industry uses facial recognition technology to identify shoplifters, antisocial patrons, and fraudsters, among other purposes such as loyalty programs, advertising, payments, and tracking customer behavior. was found to be well accepted by the public.
In the workplace, security-related implementations have gained more acceptance, albeit more limitedly, than uses related to tracking employee location and behavior.
The need for social license
An important question is why facial recognition technology is controversial in some cases and widely accepted in others.
The absence of research into the social acceptance of facial recognition in New Zealand means there is no evidence on which to base a social license for this technology.
There is also limited understanding of the range of scenarios that social license covers.
With the increasing use of facial recognition technology in private and public sector organizations, to better understand how the public feels about having their face recorded and matched against their identity in real time. is important.
Provided by The Conversation
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Quote: Your Face: The acceptance of facial recognition technology depends on who does it and where it’s done (November 9, 2024) https://phys.org/news/2024-11-facial -recognition- Retrieved November 9, 2024 from technology.html
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