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25 Colum. Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/cstlr25 and id is 1 raw text is: 


PUBLIC  PERCEPTIONS


                      THE COLUMBIA

        SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

                         LAW REVIEW

VOLUME  XXV                   STLR.ORG                         FALL 2023



                              ARTICLE


  PUBLIC   PERCEPTIONS CAN GUIDE REGULATION OF PUBLIC
                       FACIAL RECOGNITION


                       Matthew B. Kugler*

   Facial recognition technology is changing how people pass through customs at
airports, check in at schools, and move anonymously in public spaces. Yet despite
these transformations, its use by the government is largely unregulated. This Article
informs the policy and doctrinal debates about facial recognition by presenting a
public attitudes perspective. These three novel empirical studies show the nuanced
views that Americans hold about government use of facial recognition. The data
reveal that people are generally comfortable with the government using facial
recognition to investigate serious crimes, enhance the security of controlled spaces
like airports and schools, and increase the efficiency of identity verification in some
contexts. But people are often not comfortable with casual governmental facial
recognition use in public spaces. This pattern of strong comfort for tailored uses
persisted even when, in a second study, participants were primed with negative
information about the accuracy  of facial recognition. Here I explore the
implications of these results for both current Fourth Amendment doctrine as well
as future legislative reform, promoting a balanced approach that allows tailored
use offacial recognition while regulating its purposes.

I. IN TRODU CTION  ........................................................................................................ 2
II.THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT USE OF FACIAL RECOGNITION....6



    *
    Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Thanks to Andrew Ferguson, Aziz
Huq, Sara Katsanis, Hajin Kim, David Schwartz, Nadav Shoked, and Roseanna Sommers for their
comments on earlier versions of this Article, to the faculty of the University of Denver for their
feedback. Special thanks to background research by Allison Lee and general cleanup by Matt Choi.


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