Artwork: Boogaloo Bias

Artists: Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki

Response by: Dr Ciara Bracken-Roche – ADAPT Centre, School of Law & Criminology, Maynooth University

Have you ever thought about how many times your face is captured on camera, on a daily basis? What happens to your facial image once it is captured? Do you know – is it possible to know?

Your face is constantly under surveillance, and our facial images are being used to train algorithms for facial recognition technology (FRT). The introduction and use of FRT is happening across digital and physical spaces, and Boogaloo Bias showcases some of the crude, dystopic, and nefarious practices of FRT development. Surveillance is not simply police doing stake-outs, or someone looking through their curtains and out the window to monitor their neighbours’ comings and goings. Surveillance is the focused, routinised, and systematic attention to detail in order to manage, control, or care for people (Lyon, 2007). Surveillance has existed well before digital technologies, but digital technologies increase the scale and scope of surveillance. This means that the differential impacts of surveillance are also amplified and dispersed unevenly across the population. Boogaloo Bias highlights how FRT coupled with social network analysis (SNA) can lead to certain groups and populations being targeted by policing and security agencies. This is a huge concern!

Surveillance plays a part in almost all aspects of our (digital) lives today. From email to our mobile devices, and our social media profiles on the more personal side of things; over to surveillance in public spaces with CCTV, targeted digital marketing, and various form of mobile surveillance for policing and security with automated license plate recognition (ALPR), body-worn cameras (BWCs), and drones. Since surveillance is so integral to how contemporary society functions and operates, we are often not conscious of how much it permeates our lives. And even when you are conscious of surveillance, how can you challenge or resist it?

In Ireland today, the Public Service Card (PSC) is presented as being mandatory in order to access many government services. This card has your facial image and other biometric measurements on the individual. The card is not mandatory for most, but having one makes it a lot easier to access various social supports. To refuse a PSC is to opt out of some services entirely, and to make your life much more difficult when accessing others. Thus, resisting and challenging the card is only for very privileged individuals. As the Department of Justice and the Gardaí are preparing to take up FRT, it raises concerns about the PSC database being accessed and used as a reference database for FRT. And while the guards might say this will never be the case, function creep is seen across almost all surveillance contexts and technologies. When a technology is introduced for one purpose and reason, the applications and uses of the technology tend to creep into other areas over time.

Link to view more information on the artwork: https://2024.betafestival.ie/exhibitions/unsettling-the-algorithm/The%20Museum%20of%20Ethics%20and%20Interplanetary%20Technologies%20-%20A%20Dowsing%20Poster