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Washington Post – The government doesn’t know how businesses are using tech that tracks your face

Washington Post – The government doesn’t know how businesses are using tech that tracks your face

Industry advocates, such as Carl Szabo, policy counsel at online advertising trade group NetChoice, say that more transparency should be enough to alleviate much of the privacy concerns raised by consumer groups. “Once people know facial recognition technology is being used, they can react,” he said. Transparency requirements would also give groups like the GAO more insight into how exactly the tech is being used, Szabo said.

But Szabo argued that express consent doesn’t always make sense for the way that facial recognition tech might be used. If someone has a facial recognition system with a camera to verify the identities of employees entering a secure work place, he argued, the system would have consent from the employees, but not necessarily anyone who walked by the camera and was automatically compared against a database of people approved for access.

“The idea of consent as a general concept is great, but once you try to apply it to how it actually works it’s not so simple,” Szabo said.

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