Good day, and welcome to the blog.
As you all know, facial recognition is know a thing, whether you like it or not, and you may have it on your iPhone if you have one of the newest editions. A computer being able to recognize your face not only makes for quick unlocking of a phone, but a powerful tool for police and the like to use as well, not only in this country, but all over. Now, I’m counting on you guys having read the article, therefore I don’t have to go over all the technical stuff, but rather jump on into the point.
Being the reasonable Law and Debate student that I am, I noticed a very interesting red distracting ink block box of wisdom smack dab in the center of the first page of this article, reading, “The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures”. The reason for this little comment square is obvious enough, until I started to question; does the Fourth Amendment truly apply to this?
I started on my amendment quest where anyone would: with Google. This quickly brought me to constitutioncenter.org, staring into the face of The Fourth Amendment, Search and Seizure, found here. In short, no one can probe into your you stuff unless they have a good reason and a permit. For example, the bank can search your house if you owe them money. This time, however, it’s a matter of searching your person*, thus the problem here is whether or not the police are the exception to this rule, and do actually have a good reason.
From how I see it, it could go both ways, seeing as facial recognition is mainly used in a law setting to find unidentified criminals, which could easily be seen as a reasonable cause. However, you also have to take into consideration that these pictures facial recognition is recognising might be taken or used against someone's will. This could be taken as a privacy vs. safety sort of thing, but that’s a whole other issue entirely.
In summary, I can’t decide if police using facial recognition is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. I realize that’s unsatisfying, yet it also makes me curious if your guys thoughts could sway me to one side of this argument. Feel free to share your thoughts.
HI there Piper, it's Tyler. I also think that facial recognition is a good but bad thing. Sometimes is doesn't work ery will though. Once i got into my mom's iPhone with facial recognition and I can't do it anymore ππ. You know, I have a question for you Piper. Do you think it's more of a good or bad thing?
ReplyDeleteHello Tyler. I thought I made it clear, but I am on the fence on whether or not it's a good or bad thing. My big question was whether or not is was against the law for police to use it, but I don't know about that either.
DeleteThanks for commenting!
I do agree with you: The fourth amendment is after all, an amendment. Many other people have also said that this could very well be a violation of that. I agree completely. Facial recognition to me is an unnecessary precaution that in a way scares me. As you said, the police do use this to catch criminals and all that stuff... but I mean, isn't that what fingerprints are for. And anyways once you catch a face on camera, does it take a scientist to figure out who commited the crime? You simply gather all the people who look like that and narrow it down, then pelt them with questions. Eventually you'll get the person. But there could be errors... Do you think we should get rid of it?
ReplyDeleteHi Isabella, thanks for commenting.
DeleteEven if I can't decide whether or not it's illegal, I don't necessarily think we should get rid of it. While it's true fingerprints are very helpful in crime scenes (thank you for bringing that up), in the case of the robbery depicted in the article itself, I don't think fingerprints would've helped too much, it any.