Comp 317/417: Ethics & Law in Computer Science
Paper 2: Privacy
Due: Friday, Mar 2, submitted by email or blackboard
Write on ONE of the two topics below:
RFID and consumers
What benefits does RFID tagging of store items offer consumers?
What are the drawbacks? How do these balance against one another?
How might daily life change in an RFID-enabled world?
Focus primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) on
"persistent RFID" (that is, the chips remain enabled
after the product leaves the store).
Feel free to address any of the following (or to ignore them all).
- What are some reasonable policies that should govern the use
of RFID tags in consumer items?
- How does RFID affect our sense of personal autonomy?
- Our cellphones (or I-Pass) also act as RFID "tags".
Why are they often viewed differently from tagged merchandise?
- Does the availability of RFID scanners change anything?
What if a cheap handheld scanner were suddenly to become
widely available?
- Are there any other applications for RFID tagging
that have privacy ramifications?
Facial-recognition software
Discuss the issues relating to widespread government
use of facial-recognition software in public places
(streets, theaters, malls). The government has already
been experimenting with this as a way to catch known
terrorist suspects.
Crowd images are received
by a camera, and each face visible is scanned for a match
in the database, and also stored as a target for future matches.
Accuracy may vary; assume that it is at least 90%
(it may be much higher), or research this.
Possible subtopics:
- Civil liberties
- Rights of minorities
- Public safety
- Limitations on what constitutes a "public place"
If you wish, you may also consider commercial use of
such software. It is likely most commercial users
will not have a way to match faces to actual names; they will
only match faces to faces seen at previous times or in other
locations. (Even the government may have huge gaps in
the face-to-name database.)
Note that facial-recognition software is still very
experimental, and doesn't have very good accuracy
unless each person can be photographed individually,
straight-on. Thus, while it can be used today at airport
ticket counters and at entry points to large arenas,
crowd scanning is still in the future.