Very touched at the wonderful Stilgherrian’s write up here: https://stilgherrian.com/conversations/talking-facial-recognition-abc-adelaide/. It’s always a joy to join forces with Stil! Very fortunate to have spoken alongside him in Sydney at an ACCAN debate some time ago now. One of Australia’s foremost tech commentators. My first interview with the great Jules Schiller- an amazing personality- I was flawed by his take on biometrics!
The use of facial recognition technology for law enforcement has been in the media this week, not only in connection with the Black Lives Matter protests in the US, but also in Australia. That made for a good radio segment this afternoon with Jules Schiller on ABC Adelaide.
Amazon has banned police from using its facial recognition technology for the next year. IBM will no longer offer, develop, or research facial recognition technology. Microsoft and Google have also pulled back in facial recognition, though I’ll leave you to look that up for yourselves.
Meanwhile, the secretive and always-controversial facial recognition technology company Clearview AI has been found to have links to far-right political players in the US, and news is slowly emerging of its activities in Australia. I’ll have a story about that last point at ZDNet on Friday.
And on Wednesday night, ABC TV’s 7.30 ran a report on this technology. It’s a thing.
Today we were joined by Professor Katina Michael from Arizona State University. She’s also affiliated with the School of Computing and Information Technology at the University of Wollongong, and a board member of the Australian Privacy Foundation.
Source: Jules Schiller, Stilgherrian, Katina Michael, 17 July 2020, “Facial recognition technologies like ClearView AI come under immense scrutiny”, ABC Adelaide: Drive, https://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/programs/drive/drive/12346994