Protection of the rights of the individual when using facial recognition technology

Abstract

The Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) is used to match a photo of a person's face through a database that contains picture, name, and other records of someone that are already in the database. This technology uses biometric data with other available information and provides precise and accurate information about a person and his behaviour. FRT has positioned itself significantly advanced among all biometric-based technologies. The use of FRT by government agencies and commercial organisation comes under scrutiny as many of them use the technology in violation of right to privacy where the data subjects are either not informed of data collection or not consented for the data collection, use or storage of their data. Privation of regulatory measures allows government agencies and commercial organisations to operate with no real legal restraint and only under limited self-regulation in many common law countries. The research focuses on suitability of the existing law to regulate the use of FRT by analysing the criminal law and the civil law including the privacy laws in few common law countries. The analysis of the laws shows that passing of appropriate laws is inevitable as the existing laws are inadequate to regulate the use of FRT by government and commercial organisations.