Photo Credits: (Unsplash)
Tiffany Wang is an IPilogue Writer, IP Innovation Clinic Fellow, and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.
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鈥淎lways eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed鈥攏o escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.鈥
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Sprawling throughout New 91亚色 City, cameras observe and record faces and movements. These seemingly omnipresent lenses conduct and generate facial-recognition data for the New 91亚色 Police Department (鈥淣YPD鈥), capturing footage to identify individuals for criminal enforcement efforts.听
Surveillance by security cameras is not unique to the Big Apple. Chinese police forces deploy , notifying security personnel whenever or target appears in sight. . In total, operate to surveil the population of New 91亚色.听
Not only do public cameras tower over the city, but also record information that the NYPD may access with permission.
The Big Apple鈥檚 capture action in an area less than two square miles. Over ninety percent of residents are racial minorities.听
, serves the United States federal and state police forces. In 2019, the revealed that Idemia鈥檚 algorithms are prone to confuse racial minorities鈥 faces. Similarly, the
of facial data raises concerns of . If commercial algorithms continue to demonstrate significant errors in identifying individuals with varying skin tones, these concerns will quickly escalate to . Tensions may ultimately result in the NYPD
Could over 15,000 eyes create a dystopia? After all, .听听