Countries may face the need to consider the impact on privacy

In the Steven Spielberg science-fiction movie Minority Report, the character John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, attempts to evade a citywide optical recognition system through a risky black market eye transplant.

Although the film is set in 2054, such modern technology is gradually appearing in our daily lives.

Since Woodrow Wilson Bledsoe, a mathematician from the United States, worked on the use of computers to recognize human faces in the 1960s, scientists in many countries have researched the technology, and it is now widely applied in various fields.

In 2010, Facebook began to implement the technology to identify people whose faces may feature in pictures uploaded daily by internet platform users.

In January 2001, facial recognition was used by law enforcement officials at the Super Bowl in Tampa Bay, Florida, to search for potential criminals, including terrorists, attending the event. According to The New York Times, 19 people for whom arrest warrants had been issued were "potentially identified".

In October 2011, Google developed its ninth version of the Android mobile operating system, which added facial recognition to unlock a smartphone. After that, numerous companies adopted the technology for their computing platforms and devices.

However, like any privacy-related technology, the use of facial recognition has sparked controversy in some countries, with concerns being voiced over potential risks to civil rights and liberties.

In 2017, Ed Bridges, a 36-year-old office worker from Cardiff, the Welsh capital, launched a legal action after claiming that facial recognition cameras had taken pictures of him doing his Christmas shopping. The case was considered to be the first related to facial recognition in not only the United Kingdom, but the world.

On September 4, the case was dismissed by two judges at Cardiff High Court, who said that in using the technology, local police had not breached the law.

UK newspaper the Daily Mail reported that civil liberties campaigners were outraged by the court's decision and claimed the technology was a threat to public freedom.

In May last year, the General Data Protection Regulation took effect in the European Union, aimed at giving people in the trading bloc control over use of their facial recognition details and other biometric information.

As facial recognition becomes an increasingly powerful tool, it is perhaps only a matter of time before more countries pause to consider the potential impact on personal privacy.

SHAO RUI/XINHUA