Facial recognition is a highly controversial technology that is transforming border crossings around the world by fuelling an unprecedented level of surveillance & too-often racially biased automated processing of travellers. In a report released today [overview], CIPPIC documents the rapid adoption of facial recognition technologies at borders while outlining its intrusive potential and propensity for being repurposed. Facial recognition can surreptitiously identify individuals from a distance and from any live or historical image, posing a serious threat to real-world and online anonymity. Facial recognition is becoming embedded in all aspects of border crossings driven by an attempt to process travellers more efficiently and securely. But members of marginalized communities are often most heavily impacted when the technology goes awry, as some demographic groups experience far higher error rates than the general population due to lingering biases. Around the world, facial recognition systems whose creation was justified in the border control context have been repurposed for law enforcement, national security agencies, traffic safety officials, administrative agencies and even the private sector.

Our current legal framework is simply too outdated and lacking in clear safeguards to mitigate the more problematic elements of facial recognition systems. The report therefore recommends a moratorium on the adoption of facial recognition systems at our borders, and a publicly transparent reassessment of existing systems in Canada.

The report, entitled "Facial Recognition at a Crossroads: Transformation at our Borders & Beyond", was finalized with assistance from Rachel Kuchma, William Burke, Ryan Mosoff and Emily Kim. An accompanying Overview document excerpts key aspects of the core report.

Image credit: Josef Čapek, Hlava (1913), Wikimedia Commons.

CIPPIC and OpenMedia filed comments calling on the CRTC to adopt robust regulatory measures necessary to reverse Canada's broken mobile ecosystem. Canadian mobile service providers such as Bell and TELUS extract some of the highest revenues in the world, and the correspondingly high retail costs have prevented Canadians from realizing the full potential of mobile connectivity.

As our submissions to this proceeding painstakingly document, Canada's mobile retail costs are prohibitively high by global comparative standards. Canadians pay more per GB of mobile data than almost any other OECD or EU country. The amount of revenues Canadian mobile providers extracts from each customer is also world leading, and this impacts heavily on Canadians, who do not make full use of their mobile devices or are priced out of mobile connectivity altogether. On that front, Canada has fewer mobile subscribers on a per capita basis than the vast majority of OECD countries, and Canadians use barely one half the amount of mobile data as the average OECD country. Canada continues to fall further behind in terms of both adoption and data usage.

These trends have been indicative of the Canadian mobile market for years, and a robust regulatory response is required. In our final comments to this proceeding, we call upon the CRTC to mandate a wholesale regime that would allow Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) to provide mobile connectivity over incumbent service providers networks. This will allow for an infusion of competition, while ensuring that incumbent providers are well compensated for the use of their networks. CIPPIC and OpenMedia also called on the Commission to mandate affordable mobile plans with at least 4 GB of monthly data.

Image Source: Falcon Photography, "The New Golden Xperia Z5", Flickr, March 15, 2016, CC-BY 2.0