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In the readings from Magnet’s “Representing Biometrics” in When Biometrics Fail: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance,” introducing new technologies that incorporate our visual identity can improve the security lock on our iphones, while being practical for users. Biometric software has changed our technology culture: “representations of biometrics have as much of an impact on the growth and expansion of biometric as do technological developments in biometric science,” (Magnet, 134). With Biometric technology increasing convenience and providing strong authentication, the new technology has negatives associated with race, class, and gender. New forms of surveillance produced by biometric “technologies are tied both to the violent disembering of bodies marked by racialized, gendered, classed, and seualized identities to pleasure in having anxieties about security resolved by biometric surveillance,”(Magnet).

When the security of a group is threatened, we see a spike in surveillance, and as a result, biometric software is being adopted by large corporations to protect their customers. For instance, Google’s Abacus Project can track how you operate on an iphone– your voice, your typing patterns, and all your other habits to make sure a human being is using the device instead of a robot. This biometric technology is represented as objective, but that's not remotely true. In photographs and examples of media in our culture, we see how their are biased towards minority groups, often blurring the lines between ethnicities, associating their identity to social class and gender. Just the other day, I watched a comedy sketch that asked Americans on the streets of New York City the “ difference between sikhs and muslims.” A person that looks remotely Arab are often questioned at TSA or harassed on the streets (The Daily Show).

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RskvZgc_s9g

In Gates’ writings, “Finding the Face of Terror in Data,” we see the emergence of racial profiling. Facial recognition after post 9/11 was supposed to protect our nation’s security against radical extremists, but Gates argues the algorithms created a “technology for making up terrorists,” and the evidence points to a database that is dependent on racial profiling, (Gates, 102). By shaping the perception of minority groups in our culture, biometric technology has created an identity through photographs stored in databases used for facial recognition. The biometric discourse produces new forms of scopophilia– pleasure in looking.

In this week’s readings from Browne’s “B®anding Blackness: Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blackness,” Browne traces the roots of enslaving Africans and their mistreatment by institutions. The treatment of slaves as a commodity meant  “blackness” was apart of identifying an enslaved Africans and a repercussion of racism. Browne argues that branding slaves was a form of surveillance to keep in databases, therefore abusing the slave’s body for capital gain. I thought about what Browne said about the relationship between blackness and commodity. In today’s culture, blackness can be translated through fashion that relates back to slavery. Nike signed football player Colin Kaepernick to star in their advertising campaign, sparking controversy among shoppers. Colin Kaepernick symbolizes a brand that rejects the socioeconomic and political rhetoric that has been created through biometric surveillance. Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hIc_epqfI0

When I think of Browne’s analysis of biometric history, I realized our culture is through the same lense that has suppressed ‘other groups’ and has surveilled their bodies and communities. Thus, our commentary has been shaped by how biometric technology has been represented in our popular culture.

Sources:

Simone Browne (2015). “B®anding Blackness: Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blackness” in Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (pp. 89-129).

Shoshana Magnet (2011). “Representing Biometrics” in When Biometrics Fail: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance (pp. 127-148).