Evaluation of biometric data is increasing

Three years ago, racist attacks by football fans in the stadiums in Italy caused outrage across the country: players were regularly chanted insultingly because of the color of their skin. Mario Balotelli, who now plays for FC Sion, had the same experience.

During a match in Verona, he was shouted down with monkey chants for minutes by the supporters of the opposing club. «Be ashamed of your children, wives, parents, relatives, friends and acquaintances. Shame!” Balotelli then vented on Instagram with a justified rant.

Italy’s football officials reacted to the racist abuses with a drastic decision: security guards in individual stadiums were equipped with body cams, and the Italian Minister for Youth and Sport announced the use of a revolutionary technology: in the future, facial recognition should be combined with speech recognition technologies in sports stadiums, he announced. This should allow racist chants to be recognized in real time and the perpetrators to be held accountable afterwards.

Surveillance meets with rejection

It is unknown when the plans will be implemented, but they are met with acceptance. The prevention of violence in sports stadiums is also proving to be the area in Switzerland where the use of intelligent surveillance technologies is most likely to meet with approval. In a representative survey by a research group, half of those questioned were in favor of using face recognition in sports stadiums, while only 19 percent were categorically against it.

Interesting: In other areas, the automated recognition of biometric data such as voice or face has so far met with quite clear rejection. Only a third want to allow them, for example, police departments. The survey was carried out on behalf of the TA-Swiss Foundation, which deals with the opportunities and risks of new technologies. It is part of a broad study on the technological development, the legal basis and the social challenges in the field of biometric voice, speech and face recognition.

In everyday life, intelligent cameras and microphones are above all practical helpers for most people: You can open your smartphone quickly and easily or use intelligent image or music searches to find out the identity of people or song data. Hardly anyone has anything against the effective fight against racism in sports stadiums – even if the idea of ​​being constantly overheard by smart microphones in the stadium may be irritating for many fans: Face and noise recognition is a double-edged sword.

The example from the Italian sports stadiums shows how the use of biometric data for control purposes is also being considered in Western countries and is already being introduced in some cases when the purpose seems to justify it. But when and where is the limit of what is permissible reached?

“More is being done than we can imagine”

The TA researchers, led by Murat Karaboga from the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, see one of the central problems in the insidious spread of systems for recognizing biometric data, as they are used in our everyday lives. Karaboga fears that the border could shift imperceptibly – until it’s too late.

The study by TA-Swiss shows that countries like Switzerland are quickly confronted with new issues – even if technological development is still in full swing. The sociologist Anna Jobin put it this way on the occasion of the presentation of the study: “Technically, so far, less is possible than promised by the manufacturers. But more is being done than we can imagine.”

In this country, the main discussion is that autocratic states such as China or Russia monitor unrestrainedly or keep the people in check with social credit systems. Switzerland and other Western countries are miles away from such mass surveillance. However, the technological possibilities are finding their way into the private sphere in particular: Smart loudspeakers, for example, which are in constant use in many households today, are constantly connected to the manufacturers via WLAN.

Conclusions as to what exactly is being tapped, stored or evaluated are ultimately not possible, explained the lawyer Nula Frei, who worked on the study. In principle, everyone present would therefore have to give their consent to the operation of such loudspeakers, because sensitive and clearly assignable features would always be recorded. It is even more delicate when such instruments are used in public spaces, for example in a restaurant. Frei thinks it makes sense to legally ban the linking of devices used in public to databases.

App recognizes Covid patients by coughing

Voice and speech recognition systems are already capable of not only identifying people or evaluating sensitive conversations. They can also detect emotions and illnesses, although the technology is still buggy. In the case of Parkinson’s disease, for example, irregularities in the speech signal can be filtered out for vowels. Alzheimer’s patients, on the other hand, are recognizable because they use shorter words and a smaller vocabulary and form choppy sentences.

Mental illnesses can also be heard. Such algorithms are being researched intensively worldwide: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed an app that correctly identifies people with a Covid infection in 98.5 percent of cases because of the cough. As part of medical diagnostics, such instruments appear to be quite useful. The situation is different, however, when sensitive data becomes available for a job search or an insurance contract.

In the field of education, the so-called attention analysis is gaining in importance. Based on eye movements, gestures or the movement of body parts, conclusions can be drawn about the emotions and attention of students.

So far, the technology has only been widely used in China. But schools in Great Britain, Australia and the USA are also carrying out or testing such analyses. According to the authors of the study, in Western countries the focus is primarily on increasing learning success. Because many schools are already under video surveillance today, they are particularly predestined for the introduction of facial recognition.

Not only would this violate the personal rights of the students, according to the study. Authoritarian tendencies in schools would also be strengthened. According to the study by TA-Swiss, attention recognition has not yet been used in Switzerland. The study warns, however, in general against an increase in power through access to sensitive data.

Face recognition also in the Swiss police corps

In general, reluctance towards the new possibilities can be observed in Switzerland up to now. In the area in which the use of face and voice recognition software could most likely be suspected – in the police force – the reality in this country is still far from the technical possibilities. While experiments with real-time surveillance have been carried out on busy squares in England for a number of years, this has not been done anywhere in Switzerland to date.

However, the canton police of Aargau and St. Gallen use facial recognition software for limited purposes. For example, after robberies or other crimes, we can use software to compare images from surveillance cameras with people who have been recorded by the police in previous criminal proceedings.

The question of whether there is a sufficient legal basis for this is controversial. The topic will therefore probably soon be on the agenda of federal and cantonal parliaments. According to TA-Swiss, this is necessary: ​​In most areas in which voice, speech and face recognition could be used, the legal basis is currently missing, complained the lawyer Frei. The authors are even calling for a ban on certain high-risk applications, such as the introduction of real-time monitoring.

It is still unpredictable how quickly developments in Switzerland will progress and whether monitoring tendencies will be underestimated. “But we have to ask ourselves today whether objects are monitoring us,” explained the former data protection officer for the canton of Zurich, Bruno Baeriswyl: “Now the question is whether we are able to control the use of this technology.”