FB pixel

Microsoft President says 2024 could become 1984 without biometrics regulation

 

Microsoft President Brad Smith has doubled down on the need to regulate facial recognition technology, warning an audience of internet industry stakeholders that 2024 could look like the book “1984” without the prompt implementation of safeguards to limit its use by both companies and governments, Recode reports.

Smith was speaking at tech conference Web Summit in Portugal, where he warned that technology could soon give governments the ability to track everyone everywhere, and log all actions, with “profound potential ramifications for even just the fundamental civil liberties on which democratic societies rely.”

“It potentially means every time you walk into a store, a retailer knows when you were in there last, what good you picked out, what you purchased,” Smith says. “I think even that frankly pales in comparison to what it could do to relationships between individuals and the state.”

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair joined Smith on stage, and backed his call for tech regulation.

“I don’t think the governments are yet equipped to understand [these issues], but I think they need to be,” Blair said. “It really is necessary for those in the tech world … to educate the policy makers as to what this means.”

Blair also suggested that the first political group to harness the issue into a narrative of beneficial use could represent the future of politics.

A blog post by Smith published in July compared facial recognition to other regulated technologies, such as pharmaceuticals and automobiles. The post was met with criticism, including from SensibleVision’s George Brostoff, who suggested the use cases, ownership, and storage of biometric data is the real issue. A group of U.S. legislators subsequently called on the Government Accountability Office to evaluate commercial and law enforcement uses of facial recognition technologies.

Article Topics

 |   |   | 

Latest Biometrics News

 

Scottish public split over use of live facial recognition by Police Scotland

The Scottish public are split over the use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology by police in Scotland. LFR uses…

 

Biometric verification slowing cash transfer program in Nigeria

The Nigerian government is handing out cash to 2.3 million households under a scheme that relies on biometric verification. It’s…

 

African Digital Identity Hackathon winners present diverse ideas: ID4Africa 2025

The winners of the African Digital Identity Hackathon, organized by Carnegie Mellon University Africa’s Upanzi Network, took the stage during…

 

Police use of facial recognition continues to raise public concerns

Should police use facial recognition technology? Two-thirds of Milwaukee’s Common Council says no. An article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel says…

 

EU calls for public feedback on European Business Wallet

The European Commission has issued a call for feedback on the EU Business Wallet, a digital identity wallet intended for…

 

Strategies to get the most out of digital identity in focus at ID4Africa 2025

Making digital identity useful is one of the key themes of ID4Africa’s 2025 AGM in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and a…

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Biometric Market Analysis

Most Viewed This Week

Featured Company

Biometrics Insight, Opinion

Digital ID In-Depth

Biometrics White Papers

Biometrics Events