An Analysis of Facial Recognition Technology in the UK: Ethical Issues

This report examines the use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) in the UK, its current applications, and the controversies surrounding it. It explores the ethical dimensions of FRT, including discussions on utilitarianism, deontology, and Rawl's theory, and their implications for the technology's ethical application. The report analyzes the social impact of FRT, focusing on privacy concerns and potential for discrimination. It emphasizes the need for ethical considerations, sustainability, and social impact when implementing FRT, with a focus on accuracy and fairness to mitigate adverse consequences. The conclusion summarizes the importance of responsible use of FRT and the need to address ethical issues to maintain public trust.

Ethics, Sustainability and
Social Impact

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Overview of the use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) in UK.......................................1
The ethics of Facial Recognition Technology............................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
The use of technology is being increased in several sectors that helps in using
informations with the storage facility in an effective and efficient way. Mainly police has used
facial recognition technology in order to identified missing persons or criminals so that the work
of police can become more efficient and easier. Through the use of FRT by police in crowded
area such as metro stations, streets, shopping centres, festival celebrations and cultural events in
order to identifying criminals. This technology uses specific software that assist in mapping
facial characteristics of individuals by capturing images through the use of cameras, then the
biometric maps are matched along with the facial maps of people who are criminal or offender so
that suspects can be find out easily. Facial recognition technology can be in used by police forces
of UK in order to find criminals among large population quickly and easily. In this assignment,
the use of technology in UK are discussed along with the controversy on the use of facial
recognition technology. It can be done for analysing the social impact of ethical and sustainable
use of FRT. In addition, several theories of justice related to the ethical usage of technology are
discussed with the principles of these theories in the use of facial recognition technology.
MAIN BODY
Overview of the use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) in UK.
FRT is considered as a system that helps in verifying an individual from the digital image
it includes advanced human computer interaction, video database, video surveillance and so
many others (Bush, Bush and Orr, 2015). In UK the police force use this technology in order to
scan faces for see if they are criminal. The global presence of Facial Recognition Technology is
a growing one as Europe has second largest market share and many of the biggest FRT
companies are founded within it.
Current and potential uses of FRT:
Currently, there are mainly three markets in which FRT is predominantly being used such
as authentication, analysis and security. Within the United Kingdom, police have been testing
facial recognition technology in the CCTV cameras as a security measures (Demiris, Doorenbos
and Towle, 2019). It has been used for scanning the faces in crowd against police database and
containing electronic missing person system in order to find out those who have an outstanding
arrest or offenders and prohibited from attending. Whereas, the use of FRT in authentication is a
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thriving industry, through which it being applied to goods and services on a large scale.
Hardware includes new IPhone X that uses Face ID as a substance of authorising contactless
payments and unlocking devices. As it stands, the market share of Iphone's is extremely large
which leading in the UK at 34.4% thus is placed in order to introduce new users for facial
recognition and authentication (Facial Recognition Technology Market Research, 2020). This
type of security is more secure than the access codes or pins as these are easily cracked. FRT is
widely used in the financial sector for authorising online banking transactions and at ATM'S in
order to being a safe and easy authentication. In addition the use of facial recognition technology
for analytics used to varied needs which is beneficial for businesses. Technology is being in used
in shops for gathering consumer demographics that allows them to employ effective and
directive marketing and collect information without gathering personal identification of
individuals.
Controversy surrounding the use of technology:
The use of facial recognition technology is most effective in verifying faces in the crowd
to identify the suspected but in the blow of privacy campaigners UK court has ruled that police
adopt facial recognition technology in Wales doesn't breach the laws of human rights (Holder-
Brown and Parette, 2020). The South Wales police use FRT that is able to match the people
likeliness in order to pre defined image of database that was challenged in the High court. So that
court has ruled that system which is used does not breach the rights of human or UK privacy
rules related data. Lord justice Haddon-Cave and justice Swift said that they refused legal
considerations on all the grounds and suggest the use of FRT to meet the requirements of Human
rights Act through the use of Data Protection Act of UK (UK police can use controversial facial
recognition tech, court rules, 2020). In addition, Michael Drury and Julian Hayes considers that
there is a threat of privacy in using facial recognition technology. Along with this, automated
facial recognition technology poses the threat of individual freedom and should be prohibited
from use in public spaces (UK: Facial Recognition Technology In The Dock, 2020). As the
human right lawyer Martha Spurrier said that technology had some fundamental issues which
despite the enthusiasm of police for the equipment and the use of FRT should not be permitted
on the streets. As facial recognition system is benefited for detecting and preventing crime but
sometimes it creates threats in their privacy of information and trouble with the quality of image
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as well. So sectors or businesses or police must have to consider legal laws in the use of facial
recognition tech so that they can ensure the effective use of systems.
The ethics of Facial Recognition Technology.
Ethical theories are essential for the usage of technologies so that decisions can be made
ethically and direction can be considered effectively (Milligan, 2015). Also, solve the moral
issues by undertakings some moral concepts and some of the ethical theories can be implemented
so that the techniques can be used in ethical manner.
Utilitarianism theory: This was given by the Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill as a
branch of normative ethics which identifies particular criteria in the determination of morality.
Thus, actions are detected as moral from the utilitarian perspective only which means that if
actions cause huge amount of good for people then actions are ethical else unethical. It is mainly
based on the consequences of actions that can be either good or bad that ascertains if actions are
ethical or not (Osmo and Landau, 2017). This theory is narrow in their concept as it mainly
emphasise on good and bad impact but doesn't consider entire effect that actions create on
environment as well as society. For instance, if company focused on facilitating goods and
services that assists in better satisfaction to their customers but its actions are leading harm to the
environment then even though people happiness can be raised but these actions can not be
ethical.
Deontology theory: It is normative in nature in which it contains that actions must be
based on several rules instead of the consequences of actions. This theory defines appropriate
rules under which actions can be considered for doing the things in a right way. Deontology
theory is easy and simple to use as people only require to follow specific set of rules and
regulations so that their actions can be ethically made (Best-Rowden and Jain, 2017). All these
rules makes the theory strict and restricts people actions. For instance, when government of
country breaks into hackers system so that they can be dis functioned this action for people but it
is opposed to the breaking rule of system software for others.
Rawl's theory: In this theory, all individual is reasoned as a free citizen that holds equal
rights which are cooperating in an economic systems of egalitarian. Thus, according to this
theory all people is at its discretion of taking decisions by selecting between the right and wrong
concepts (Paudyal, Banerjee and Gupta, 2016). The principles of Rawls theory supports
decisions regarding to be free as well as provide liberty to every individuals equally.
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Apply ethical theories which are discussed above to the practice of using FRT in UK:
Utilitarianism view: According to this theory, actions helps in improving people
happiness that are ethical in nature. With the use of facial recognition technology police can find
criminals and missing people, use in health care sector as well as help businesses in developing
appropriate advertisements. Thus, with the use of FRT several advantages can be acquired for the
society and it can be said that technology is ethically used in this concept (Sharif, 2016).
Through the implementation or use of FRT many advantages can be obtained that assist in
developing the public benefits. It is termed as ethical because it has narrow scope and various
other factors are ignored that validated their uses in crowded locations.
Deontologists view: According to this theory all actions are taken under the formulation
of specific set of rules and regulations that are termed to be an ethical. It makes the use of facial
recognition technology is unethical as it is being in used against the privacy of people that raise
concerns in the society or public. As FRT captures informations about the individuals and send
out them to authorise without the individual consent and their knowledge (Chen, Huang and Lv,
2017). Many of the individuals are not aware about that how these information is being in used
that is in against of the privacy policy of United Kingdom because it directly affects the privacy
factor of citizens. Thus, it is considered as an unethical theory as rules of using technology are
followed by the government and privacy policy are ignored that raise some concerns towards the
privacy.
Rawl's view: In this, all people are considered as a free citizens of UK that means they
are freely make decisions on the basis of discretion about the right and wrong. As all individuals
are treated equally and facilitated liberty in order to make equal decisions. This would make
FRT unethical as people discriminated on the behalf of gender, colour, community etc. which
declines their freedom and effects on their decisions and behaviours in public places (Davis,
2016). Along with this, it has several errors in the authentication and identification in which
wrong people have been analysed as criminals that impact the people dignity and trust issues
with the government.
From the above discussion it has been said that the usage of facial recognition technology
ethically as well as unethically as technology is facilitating several advantages to the people that
despite several issues. Technology can be used for the surveillance as well as security if it is
efficiently used then it does not harm the people dignity and freedom. It is essential that cameras
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must be increased so that they emphasising on facial characteristics that must be considered so
that accuracy can be raised.
CONCLUSION
It can be summarised from the above report that facial recognition technology is very
useful for the different businesses such as organisations, hospitals, security, general public and so
on so that surveillance can be raised with the high convenience of technology using. As this type
of technology can assist in raising the authentications and security of public places by finding out
criminals and in UK there have been several controversies for utilising facial recognition
technology as it mainly increased the threat of privacy among public. Technology is become
more ethical by using the cameras for facial recognition so that they do not analyse wrong people
on random basis that can raise the feeling of distrust for police among the people. It is essential
for users to ensures that this technology do not target any specific group or community of
persons and neglects others as it can creates some communal unrest and conflicts. In order to
increase potentials of technologies, users must considers some ethical, sustainable and social
considerations by raising the accuracy of cameras that will help in minimising the adverse
controversy and impacts of techniques from working.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Bush, V., Bush, A.J. and Orr, L., 2015. Monitoring the ethical use of sales technology: An
exploratory field investigation. Journal of Business Ethics .95(2). pp.239-257.
Demiris, G., Doorenbos, A.Z. and Towle, C., 2019. Ethical considerations regarding the use of
technology for older adults: The case of telehealth. Research in gerontological
nursing .2(2). pp.128-136.
Holder-Brown, L. and Parette, H.P., 2020. Children with disabilities who use assistive
technology: Ethical considerations.
Milligan, C.S., 2015. Facial recognition technology, video surveillance, and privacy. S. Cal.
Interdisc. LJ .9. p.295.
Osmo, R. and Landau, R., 2017. The role of ethical theories in decision making by social
workers. Social Work Education .25(8). pp.863-876.
Best-Rowden, L. and Jain, A. K., 2017. Longitudinal study of automatic face recognition. IEEE
transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence. 40(1). pp.148-162.
Sharif, M. and et. al., 2016, October. Accessorize to a crime: Real and stealthy attacks on state-
of-the-art face recognition. In Proceedings of the 2016 acm sigsac conference on
computer and communications security (pp. 1528-1540).
Chen, Z., Huang, W. and Lv, Z., 2017. Towards a face recognition method based on uncorrelated
discriminant sparse preserving projection. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 76(17).
pp.17669-17683.
Davis, J. P. And et. al., 2016. Investigating predictors of superior face recognition ability in
police super‐recognisers. Applied Cognitive Psychology. 30(6). pp.827-840.
Paudyal, P., Banerjee, A. and Gupta, S.K., 2016, March. Sceptre: a pervasive, non-invasive, and
programmable gesture recognition technology. In Proceedings of the 21st International
Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (pp. 282-293).
Online
Facial Recognition Technology Market Research. 2020. [Online] Available through:
<https://www.unlocking-potential.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Facial-
Recognition-Technology-Market-Research.pdf>.
UK police can use controversial facial recognition tech, court rules. 2020. [Online] Available
through: <https://www.wired.co.uk/article/police-facial-recognition-south-wales-court-
decision>.
UK: Facial Recognition Technology In The Dock, 2020. [Online] Available through:
<https://www.mondaq.com/uk/Privacy/873684/Facial-Recognition-Technology-In-The-
Dock>.
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