Facial recognition surveillance and public space: protecting protest movements

ABSTRACT

As Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and pro-democracy demonstrations in Chile and Hong Kong demonstrate, protest movements are gathering momentum across the world. Simultaneously, governments have been expanding their surveillance capacities in the name of safeguarding the public and addressing emergencies. Highlighting the lack of oversight and accountability measures on government use of facial recognition technology in public space, the article underscores how facial recognition technology has undermined the right to engage in peaceful assembly and augmented state power. It also highlights the pivotal role of technology companies in aiding governments with public space surveillance and suppression of protests. It argues that facial recognition regulation must redistribute power not only by breaking and taxing tech companies, fortifying regulatory enforcement, and increasing public scrutiny by adopting prohibitive laws, but also by democratizing big tech companies by making them public utilities and giving people a say on how these companies should be governed. Crucially, we must also decolonize facial recognition governance discourse through recognizing the colonial practices of extraction and exploitation and listening to the voices of Indigenous peoples and communities. With these efforts, a new facial recognition regulation will ensure that political movements and protests can flourish in the modern state.

KEYWORDS:

• Facial recognition technology
• surveillance
• political protests
• protest movements
• public space

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Jessica Whetters for excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 American Civil Liberties Union v United States Department of Justice 2019. In October 2019 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought an action against the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Agency, claiming that the public had a right to know when facial recognition software was being utilized under the Freedom of Information Act. The case was filed after the ACLU made a freedom of information request in January of 2019. The DoJ, FBI, and DEA failed to produce any responsive documents (“ACLU Challenges FBI Face Recognition Secrecy,” n.d.).

2 See Binding Treaty, Bus. & Hum. Rts. Res. Ctr., business-humanrights.org/en/binding-treaty (providing the latest developments and progress on the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights); see also Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises With Respect to Human Rights, U.N. Hum. Rts. Council, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/WGTransCorp/Pages/IGWGOnTNC.aspx; Human Rights Council, Elaboration of an International Legally Binding Instrument on Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights, 26th Sess., U.N. Doc. A/HRC/26/L.22/Rev.1 (June 25, 2014) (resolution adopted by 20 votes in favour, 13 abstentions and 14 against); Human Rights Council, Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, 26th Sess., U.N. Doc. A/HRC/26/L.1 (June 23, 2014).

3 For example, the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission had, in March 2020, called on suspension, see Equality and Human Rights Commission 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) (‘Government Use of Facial Recognition Technologies: Legal Challenges and Solutions’ (FaceAI) [ agreement number: S-MIP-21-38]).