EN: Opinion — Facial recognition in Portugal

Within 20 years, facial recognition went from technology exclusive to spy movies, on to something we use every day to unlock our phones, absentmindedly ignoring the engineering marvel behind it. It's been a while already since we started this trek towards normalising this technology in our lives, and it is expected that it continues conquering progressively public spaces in our daily life. A practical example is the latest initiative from the Portuguese government, according to a recent news article from the newspaper Jornal ECO, to implement facial recognition tech to facilitate the use of online public services.

I'm not sure I want my country's government normalising facial recognition of all citizens, under whatever excuse.

To start, in contrast with other forms of biometric identification, like fingerprints, this type of identification does not require the citizen's consent, because it can be used from a dsitance, nor does it need the citizen's physical presence, since it can be applied to a video.

Secondly, I should say I don't think there's an evil plan to have us under surveillance all the time. But this is a first step to make it "normal" for the government to use our faces to automate processes, and it sets the precedent for this tech to become an integral part of the Portuguese public reality. The arguments usually used to further the use of this tech are efficiency and puvlic safety:

China has a videosurveillance system based on facial rec that allows the government to identify 1.4 billions of citizens — and to classify their behaviors to calculate a social score. Each individual's score is influenced by their financial health, interactions with law authorities, work attendance, the people they hang out with, etc. Depending on the citizen's point score, they are entitled or forbidden from some liberties: having an unpaid fine may be enough for you to be forbidden from buying a plane ticket, for example. There is no human intervention in this system: just behaviours being analysed and producing a score, all in the name of social order.

Also in the name of public safety, Russia is implementing a similar surveillance system, predicted to be the biggest in the planet, and, and London is aiming towards the same direction.

Again, we don't have a totalitarian government like China or Russia, or the surveillance needs of a city like London. But we forget: when we share data with companies or governments, this act of sharing is permanent: now that this information was sent out, it sits beyond our control. In contrast, our trust in these entities — especially the government — is circumstantial: the set of people, political parties, values that consist of the government today will not be the same components of the government in twenty years' time. But the government in 2040 will have access to all we have done in the two decades prior (or even further back).

Let's visit the worst case scenario: a Portuguese Trump, a Salazar 2.0, or just the polar opposite of your political opinions whatever they may be. Nobody predicted the rise of a totalitarian regime in China, North Korea, Russia, or the progressive creep of the far right in Hungary, and more with each passing day in Central and Western Europe.

Do you want this group of people to know where you've been, who you spoke to, what you wrote, your opinions on them without you being able to claim this control back, and they have all the power to act upon this knowledge?

This is our dilemma: will we blindly trust the benevolence of these future entities? Or will we think critically on the risks first?