Face Recognition: to Deploy or not to Deploy? A Framework for Assessing the Proportional Use of Face Recognition Systems in Real-World Scenarios

Abstract: Face recognition (FR) has reached a high technical maturity. However, its use needs to be carefully assessed from an ethical perspective, especially in sensitive scenarios. This is precisely the focus of this paper: the use of FR for the identification of specific subjects in moderately to densely crowded spaces (e.g. public spaces, sports stadiums, train stations) and law enforcement scenarios. In particular, there is a need to consider the trade-off between the need to protect privacy and fundamental rights of citizens as well as their safety. Recent AI policies, notably the European AI Act, propose that such FR interventions should be proportionate and deployed only when strictly necessary. Nevertheless, concrete guidelines on how to address the concept of proportional FR intervention are lacking to date. This paper proposes a framework to contribute to assessing whether an FR intervention is proportionate or not for a given context of use in the above mentioned scenarios. It also identifies the main quantitative and qualitative variables relevant to the FR intervention decision (e.g. number of people in the scene, level of harm that the person(s) in search could perpetrate, consequences to individual rights and freedoms) and propose a 2D graphical model making it possible to balance these variables in terms of ethical cost vs security gain. Finally, different FR scenarios inspired by real-world deployments validate the proposed model. The framework is conceived as a simple support tool for decision makers when confronted with the deployment of an FR system.