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You Can Fight Facial Recognition
How to opt out of tech that invades your privacy
Too often, facial recognition feels like a mysterious, society-pervading technology that is too complex for individuals to understand or combat. We read about scary new applications of the tech and its increasingly concerning role in determining who gets a job, who gets a loan, or even who gets arrested. Because facial recognition is often mobilized by governments and massive corporations, though, it’s easy for individuals to feel powerless in the face of these technologies.
But we’re not powerless. New laws, new tech, and new collective action movements are giving consumers the tools we need to fight back against indiscriminate or harmful uses of facial recognition technologies. After I wrote a story last month investigating Covid-19 temperature tablets that integrate with facial recognition databases, I received a reader question that addressed this head-on. Tech professional Michele Piper reached out via Twitter to ask, “Are there things we, as individuals, can do to protect ourselves other than knowing this company?”
Here are a variety of specific ways that you — as a normal person — can protect yourself, your family, and society at large from abusive uses of facial recognition.
