Case Study: Code of Ethics for Facial Recognition Technology

Abstract

Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) is a way of identifying an individual by comparing their facial signature to a database of known faces. It has many current uses, and this is only expected to grow due to its many potential and promising applications. However, this technology presents a lot of ethical issues that need to be addressed. This paper examines current literature to find the current ethical issues of FRT such as its usage to infringe on one’s privacy, use an individual’s data without their consent and misidentify individuals. Based on these issues, a code of ethics will be created that will ensure an individual's privacy and data security and minimize the biases and misidentifications in FRT. This code of ethics is applied and assessed via a case study about the usage of live facial recognition technology in the New Zealand Police.