IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 55

political categories of risk and threat, and that its
computational architecture can be manipulated in
whatever fashion those deploying the system wish.
That practices like the BAE seem banal and ordinary
is the exact reason they need more scrutiny, and not
be allowed to simply slip into normalcy. This is particularly urgent in this specific moment in which computer vision and FRS are being used during the
COVID-19 global pandemic for such tasks as the
enforcement of quarantines via drone and the checking of individuals' temperatures as they board airplanes [6]. As David Lyons argues in Surveillance
after September 11, 9/11 didn't give cause to invent
automated biometrics, but it did provide the rationale
to widely and quickly expand the usage of such technologies [7]. Similarly, we should be cautious about
FRS usage that is justified under the emergency circumstances of a global pandemic that are then kept
in place and/or expanded afterwards.5
Examining how FRS is used to identify and sort citizenship within mechanisms like the BAE is immensely important; alongside this, the process of how
" citizen " and " non-citizen " is defined, as data points
within larger mechanisms like the BAE, needs to be
made transparent. The categories of " citizen " and
" non-citizen, " as sortable data categories, are not
objective and are vulnerable to political purposes;
building FRS with such categories at their cores
leaves FRS open to manipulation by political systems.
Increasing transparency throughout systems like FRS
serves dual purposes: it will generate informed and
effective policy and regulation of the technology; and
it will make more clear the political motivations
behind labeling certain individuals and populations
citizens and others non-citizens.

Facial Recognition Software and
the Airport as Border
Airports are essential sites for monitoring the movements of populations through corporate and national
assemblages in order to harness State desires for
identification and verification of those passing
through its borders; the use of FRS within these citizenship projects are a clear example of how such projects involve multiple interlock ing assemblages
centered around national interests. Airports act as
countries' entry and exit chokepoints, activated as
borders. In effect, biometrics in this instance, like

As well, we should be wary of the data being gathered during this time
and how it is used in future training machine learning systems: one can
imagine the glut of footage of people wearing masks during the pandemic
that can be used as large scale datasets that could then be applied to track
those covering their faces in during protests; the gathering and usage of
such data needs to be transparent and its application regulated with care.

DECEMBER 2020

∕

FRS, are technological tactics used to monitor and
restrict movement of populations.6
Importantly, it is useful to identify the concept of the
border not, as Balibar warns, as simply a way to define a
territory, but rather as relating " precisely to establishment
of definite identities, national and otherwise " [8]. As Ajana
argues, airports, and their integration of borders, are
spaces where " technical elements and specificities ...
namely the interconnected databases, identity registers,
and [material components facilitate] the distribution [of
bodies that flow] across networks " [5, p. 75]. Borders are
polysemic, in particular along divisions of citizenship:

Borders are polysemic, in particular
along divisions of citizenship: they
both exclude and include people
based on a collection of information
relating to their identities.
they both exclude and include people based on a collection of information relating to their identities, identities
that are generated in large part by the interlocking assemblages of citizenship projects that build structures to legitimate those it verifies as citizens. Taking the BAE's
reliance on FRS, an airport's multiple assemblages of government agencies and industry partners become especially transparent structures used to legitimate citizens.
Airports have long presented a site where these various databases, documenting and registration practices,
alongside technical elements and material components
succinctly collide in one massive assemblage employed
in the management of populations movement in and out
of country; similarly, photos have long been used as a
means to identify those populations' movements, with
national passports being an obvious example. Looking
closer at the U.S. instructions for preparing the photos
for passport and visa applications, it is clear how important the face is in verifying the identity of the person:
not only must the photo be recent and in color, but it
must be " Taken in full-face view directly facing the

While not referenced directly, the following sources were helpful in forming
my thoughts in this section: P. Adley, " Borders, identification and surveillance, " in Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies. London, U.K.: Routledge, 2012, pp. 193-200; R. Pallitro and J. Heyman, " Theorizing cross-border
mobility: Surveillance, security and identity, " Surveillance & Society, vol. 5,
no. 3, pp. 315-334, 2002; L. Amoore, S. Marmura, and M.B.B. Salter, " Smart
borders and mobilities: Spaces, zones, enclosures. " Surveillance & Society,
vol. 5, no. 2, 2002; H. Cunningham and J. Heyman. " Introduction: Mobilities
and enclosures at borders, " Identities, vol. 11, no. .3, pp. 289-302, 2004.

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020

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