About event

Join us for this exciting 1 hour Live Streamed SSN Data Cultures seminar with 2023 SSN Visiting Scholar, Ausma Bernot (no recording)

Infrastructures of Facial Recognition Technologies in Australia

Join the SSN and Deakin’s Critical Digital Infrastructures and Interfaces (CDII) group as our #DataCultures stream host one of our 2023 SSN visiting scholars, Ausma Bernot, via Live Stream. Ausma will be in conversation with Dr Christopher O’Neill after her talk. Join in the conversation and Q and A via YouTube Live chat, or on Twitter with #SSNseminar #Datacultures.

Abstract

Australia is contending with a slew of new facial recognition technologies and their uses, in the context of regulatory gaps and insufficient understanding of the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which they are used. Conversations about best practices for governing facial recognition systems at both the design and application levels are largely motivated by research ethics, competitive industry advantage, and public accountability to citizens, not the advantage of the people whose facial data will be fuelling facial recognition. Considering the expanding scope of facial recognition uses, these discussions put into question the meaning of best practices and how to implement them. For example, regulatory gaps allow for facial recognition technologies to be used in intrusive and covert ways. The project is built on 32 qualitative multi-stakeholder interviews with government, corporate, and academic respondents, and the data is analysed using thematic axial coding. The project findings suggest that the governance of facial recognition technologies requires a comprehensive framework of laws, including a reform of the ongoing Privacy Act and a national law or charter of human rights at the first instance. Furthermore, the study calls into question what best practices constitute in the national context of Australia, in particular considering the impacts on Indigenous Australians.

Speaker Bio

Ausma Bernot has submitted her PhD at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University. She has six years of work experience with forensic science and research organisations across the globe, in particular China, where she had the chance to gain insights on how technologies are governed at provincial and national levels. Being fluent in Mandarin and building on existing networks in China, she has excellent capabilities to access key information on both technology and governance in the country. Her current research focuses on the effects that the merging of infotech and biotech triggers in the fields of governance, surveillance, policing, and public safety. Her doctoral research explores the dynamic interaction between surveillance technologies and social context and questions around totalisation of surveillance in China.

Discussant Bio

Dr Christopher O’Neill is an ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Monash University, working in the area of Communications and Media Studies. His doctoral research analysed body-sensing technologies, such as heart rate monitors and productivity sensors, their historical development and their contemporary impact in the workplace, the medical clinic, and the (smart) home. His current work examines the development of biometric technologies including facial recognition cameras, and what implications such technologies might have for conceptions of identity and governance

Join the live stream at this link

In order to take part in the live chat and Q and A, please sign in to a YouTube account.

Join the conversation on Twitter @SSNDeakin.

With thanks to our co-host

This event is co-hosted with Critical Digital Infrastructures and Interfaces (CDII) research group.