Almost everyone accepts surveillance as a responsible measure to protect public safety. The privacy advantage that face recognition has over surveillance videotape is, unlike videotape, digital images are not being recorded and then stored indefinitely. Most importantly, while many of the concerns are not well founded and are certainly exaggerated, the benefits of face recognition have been only minimally reported or discussed. This is akin to viewing the universe by looking through the wrong end of the telescope, where small things are made large and large things are made small. I would like to suggest two compelling areas where there is no apparent advocacy, but our privacy is being profoundly violated.
Students are given magnetic key cards that do get lost, that are prone to be misplaced or stolen.
They are loaned and passed on to friends. This is hardly a robust security system. Physical access door security is a huge problem on college campuses let alone public schools, offices, factories and government buildings. This is a problem of security and privacy. This same problem carries over to the electronic world, in applications such as ATMs.