Digital Content

Facial Recognition - affordances

Atlantic Articles
Who Owns Your Face
Facial Recognition + Police Arrests

On Characters Passwords v.s. Biometric Unlocking:
That’s a question with no easy answer. Technologists had a similar question a few years ago when smartphones started rolling out fingerprint readers: Could cops make someone scan their thumbprint to unlock their phone? The answer, it turned out, is ... maybe. In several cases since 2014, state and federal judges have signed search warrants that compelled fingerprint unlocks. The Fifth Amendment protects people from having to give up information that could incriminate them, like a password or PIN code. But a thumbprint isn’t something you know, which would be protected by the Constitution; it’s something you are. Like DNA or your handwriting, physical attributes are usually considered outside the boundaries of Fifth Amendment protections.