Electronic surveillance

We must stop smiling our way towards a surveillance state

In the last few years facial recognition has been gradually introduced across a range of different technologies.

Some of these are relatively modest and useful; thanks to facial recognition software you can open you smartphone just by looking at it, and log into your PC without a password. You can even use your face to get cash out of an ATM, and increasingly it's becoming a standard part of your journey through the airport now.

And facial recognition is still getting smarter. Increasingly it's not just faces that can be recognised, but emotional states too, if only with limited success right now. Soon it won't be too hard for a camera to not only recognise who you are, but also to make a pretty good guess at how you are feeling.

But one of the biggest potential applications of facial recognition on the near horizon is, of course, for law and order. It is already being used by private companies to deter persistent shoplifters and pickpockets. In the UK and other countries police have been testing facial recognition in a number of situations, with varying results.