Biometrics and Physiognomy

Lea Laura Michelsen is a PhD fellow at the Department of Aesthetics and Culture, Aarhus University (DK) and a visiting scholar at the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths (UK). She is researching resistance to digital biometrics and draws on the work of Zach Blas, which she describes as “aesthetic practice”; somewhere between artistic practice and research practice.

Michelsen argues that current uses of biometrics have brought about a renaissance of physiognomy (the supposed art of judging character from facial characteristics) and reinforces social inequality through infrastructural racism and discrimination. She points out the opportunities of bias that could give rise to discrimination at different steps of the process.

In data gathering for example, the data that is fed into the visual database and used to train machine learning algorithms is made up mainly of white male faces, and so the standard for what a ‘normal’ face looks like defaults to that of a white male. Faces which diverge from that standard are therefore ‘othered’, which presents a practical as well as an ethical issue. The lack of representation of ethnic minority faces means that facial recognition technologies will work less well for non-white people. Physiognomy has traditionally discriminated against ethnic minorities and disabled people, casting them as intellectually and morally inferior and in a way, a modern version of this being played out every time a machine fails to recognise a face which diverges from the ‘normal’.

There are real, negative consequences of facial recognition failure, and it becomes a bigger issue as the use of these systems becomes more prevalent. It could restrict access to funds, healthcare and freedom of movement for minorities. I would stop short however, of suggesting there’s malicious intent on par with the practice of physiognomy.

The history and practice of physiognomy is connected to colonialist and fascist ideals, assigning moral superiority to white, western men, over all others. The difference between physiognomy and the discriminating facial recognition systems is intent, and it’s that that determines whether or not there is a moral issue here.

Both Michelsen and Blas consider the entire practice of biometrics, and in particular, facial recognition, immoral. I am not inclined to assign any morality to this practice, even though the result is often discriminatory. For immorality to occur, there needs to be intent, and in the process of creating facial recognition systems, neither the humans nor the machines involved intend to behave badly towards minorities. The discriminating consequences are a result of poor system design, which without an economic imperative, is unlikely to be fixed any time soon.

As countries in the global south become more economically empowered, we may see an shift towards less discriminatory systems as more people in these countries become software designers rather than just users, but for now, the economic benefits of facial recognition systems are undeniable. These systems offer increased accuracy (compared to the human eye), an increase in volume of processed faces per unit time, faster verification, a reduction in labour costs, less administration than paper ID etc.

The advancement of biometrics cannot be slowed down or stopped, because there is an economic imperative for its growth. Instead, those who are concerned with issues of discrimination should focus their energies on designing better biometric systems, rather than try to resist the inevitable.

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