In a world that’s becoming increasingly digital, smartphones have become a popular tool to document everyday occurrences; traveling, food, and moments with friends and family. Following the murder of George Floyd, smartphones have been especially popular in documenting protests and the police brutality that follows it. Surely, too many people following these protests, holding accountability for these policemen is a priority. Having the capability of uploading footage for the purpose of spreading awareness is vital in ensuring accountability. For many filmmakers and photographers, these protests are an opportunity to document history in the making. However, what many people fail to understand is the consequences that may arise from sharing videos and photos of these protests.
What is Facial Recognition?
Facial recognition has become an increasingly exploited type of technology. Law enforcement has taken advantage of this very efficient tool through software bought from Amazon (Rekognition) or Clearview AI. Face-detection is often used to identify criminals through public security cameras, Ring cameras, and more recently, smartphone footage. In a tweet from the Dallas Police Dept, it encouraged people to report any captured illegal footage through their own iWatch app. While their ploy ultimately failed, it shows that social media users need to think twice about what they upload to the internet, as it can have several unknown results. Although facial recognition technology has improved, statistics have also shown that due to the lack of diversity in the software, misidentification is common especially for people of color.
As a filmmaker myself, it was my first instinct to grab my camera and go to protests to start documenting. I believe that filmmaking has a lot of power in spreading awareness for pressing issues and that I had an obligation to make sure these voices wouldn’t go unheard. Surely, this isn’t a blog post trying to dissuade other filmmakers and photographers from doing so, but readers should be informed about the potential consequences of posting their work to social media. In 2015, during the Freddie Grey protests in Baltimore, police used facial recognition to identify protestors that had any warrants and arrest them. John Oliver described this practice as “a sinister way to undermine the right to assemble.”
What can you do?
So what are the solutions? Recently, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft have announced a halt to the sales of facial recognition technology to the police. Protestors should continue documenting but be weary of people’s faces. If a face does show up in your footage there’s several things you can do:
- Black out protestors face. Police have technology that can reverse blurring effects, so blacking out faces is the safest option.
- Keep the footage in your possession until there’s a safer time to publish.
- Delete the video.
A senior senior policy analyst for the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the ACLU, Jay Stanley states that the FBI should be seeking footage showing events of police brutality rather than videos of peaceful protestors. The point is to assure safety for people who are exercising their first amendment rights. In this very intense political climate, it’s vital that we understand the power that we have available at our fingertips, but also the different outcomes that could follow.
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