The privacy professional community worldwide is divided about facial recognition and how, as a society, we should tackle this exceptional technology. Here in Australia, too, we are asking: Do we ban it? Limit it to prescribed applications? Regulate it?

The revelation that Australian entrepreneur Hoan Ton-That's facial recognition app Clearview AI has been used by US law enforcement will no doubt increase calls to ban the tech. In Western democracies in particular, we want the dystopian visions presented by an always-on, forever-watching, non-human presence to remain in the realm of science fiction.

Facial recognition is not inherently evil; rather, it is the way it is used that can be alarming. Concerns about Ton-That’s offering are perhaps less about facial recognition (the tech itself) and more about the underpinning AI, whereby scrapings from Facebook, YouTube and other publicly available online sources are matched against the face of a suspected criminal.

Even if it is used only by national security and law enforcement agencies to catch baddies, there is a creepiness to it. Even worse, the ‘matches’ are only probable matches, not certainties. It leaves a sour taste. It feels unfair and impolite.

It is clear that industry self-regulation is nowhere near sufficient. There are too few saints and too many cowboys. But if the knee-jerk response is to call for a ban on facial recognition, what exactly do we mean? Are we talking about a ban, full-stop, or are we referring more to a kind of moratorium, such as suggested by the EU in a draft white paper currently making the rounds, until we reach some sort of international social, political and regulatory consensus?