David Kopel and Michael Krause

About the author: David Kopel is a research director and Michael Krause is a senior fellow at the Independence Institute.

Facial recognition technology (FRT), which has already been installed at some airports in the United States and was used by security personnel at Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, has a dismal record of failure. Through a combination of video cameras and computer software, the technology is supposed to be able to identify individuals, such as terrorists or criminals, within a crowd. But in previous tests the technology has failed to recognize targeted individuals, falsely identified others, and been easily fooled by small changes in the targeted individual's appearance. However, the bigger problem with FRT is the threat it poses to individual privacy. If the technology ever starts to work, it could...