The two faces of the child in facial recognition industry discourse: biometric capture between innocence and recalcitrance

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how the child is evoked in the discursive construction of facial recognition technology. Facial recognition technology is one of the most socially contentious emerging technologies of recent years, heavily criticised for enabling racialized and other forms of social harms. Drawing on data gathered through facial recognition tradeshow ethnographies, and interviews with members of the biometrics industry, we explore how the biometric monitoring of children has gained a prominent place in the industry’s promotion of facial recognition technology as a mode of ‘careful’ surveillance. At the same time, however, the fast-changing face of the growing child is acknowledged as a difficult technical challenge to the efficient development and use of this technology. We argue that in these industry discourses the child is figured as both innocent and recalcitrant, and that the facial recognition industry has productively exploited the tension between these two figurations to legitimate and expand its own enterprise.