1. Discuss other commercial applications of facial recognition technology. Come up with two new-product concepts that employ this technology.
2. Discuss the ethics of incorporating facial recognition technology in products.
Facial recognition technology is not new, but the way it is being used is. If you have a criminal record, police can find that out just by looking at you-through their iPhones, that is. Using a device known as Moris, which stands for Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, a police officer can snap a picture of a person's face or scan a person's iris and obtain immediate information if there is a match in a criminal database. No more going down to the station and getting inky fingertips-the gadget can collect fingerprints right on the spot. Whereas an iris scan must be conducted with the person's knowledge because of the closerange necessary, a picture can be snapped from several feet away without the person knowing it. Facebook uses facial recognition to allow users to identify friends in pictures, and several mobile phone apps allow users to identify Facebook friends with a mere snap of a picture. Google considered a project that would enable mobile phone users to snap a picture of someone and then conduct an image search but rejected the idea because of ethical concerns.