Our biometric future

For more than half a century, researchers have worked to teach machines to recognize human faces, building systems that can detect a face and tell one person from another. Such systems are usually called facial recognition technology, or FRT. Engineers often see the work as a path to more intelligent, responsive machines, while companies and government agencies want the same tools for automated surveillance that can watch over large areas with less human labor and reach further.

Kelly Gates treats FRT as a clear case of technocratic governance that fails, in which new tools are adopted as quick fixes for deep social problems. Drawing on news coverage, press releases, policy papers, public relations materials and similar sources, she shows that the push for these systems is shaped less by any goal of greater safety for ordinary people than by the agendas of corporations, police and state security bodies. Those groups are convinced the technology is essential and pay little attention to its tangled and possibly harmful effects on society.

Rather than assuming that a particular technological future is unavoidable, the book focuses on the politics behind how these technologies are built and put into use. Its argument is that the future of biometric identification is open and can be contested.