Super Bowl Surveillance: Facing Up to Biometrics

Biometric facial recognition can provide significant benefits to society. At the same time, the rapid growth and improvement in the technology could threaten individual privacy rights. The concern with balancing the privacy of the citizen against the government interest occurs with almost all law enforcement techniques, however, and we should not let the fear of potential but inchoate threats to privacy, such as super surveillance, deter us from using facial recognition where it can produce positive benefits. Biometric facial recognition is by no means a perfect technology, and much technical work has to be done before it becomes a truly viable tool to counter terrorism and crime. But the technology is getting better and there is no denying its tremendous potential. In the meantime, we, as a society, have time to decide how we want to use this new technology. By implementing reasonable safeguards, we can harness Its power to maximize its benefits while minimizing the intrusion on individual privacy.