Title: Facial Recognition and the Fourth Amendment: Search, Seizure, and Constitutional Limits in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper will discuss issues related to the constitutionality of the implementation of mass facial recognition technology (FRT) by U.S. law enforcement by 2025. It argues that FRT systems operating as one-to-many, that is, those systems that scan whole populations, are the contemporary general warrants in the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. According to a doctrinal study of Supreme Court jurisprudence, Katz, Carpenter, Jones, Kyllo, the case law, when applied, roughly analogizes to narrow the use of FRT, there is not, as of today, a legal regime that can effectively narrow a technology that allows passive, ubiquitous, and algorithmic tracking and surveillance. The examples of false arrests and actual instances where the FRTs have been used by the federal government prove to be immensely invasive, and the fact that the technology is biased racially is alarming. The paper finds that the present legislation in the United States is unsatisfactory and a federal mandate that warrants be issued on the basis of probable cause and then prescribed in an orderly of increasing protection safeguards of data minimization, autonomous control and disclosure, is a first step to avoid creation of a domed surveillance state that is inconsistent with constitutional practices.
Author: Arjit Kandalai
Language: English
Topic: Criminal Law and Evidence
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4415116179
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