0714 - Alberta Wants My Face: Facial Recognition, The Courts, and the Echo of Identification

Course Description

In his “Postscript on Control Societies” Gilles Deleuze wrote that in disciplinary societies, you’re always starting over. Moving from one institution to another (from the school to the clinic to the barracks to the prison) the mechanisms that determine what you are in relation to the environment and the power structures around you keep shifting. He argued that in control societies, however, the goal is to produce a lineal flow of influence over people from the cradle to the grave. This tends to work best when it seems as though the mechanisms that are used to achieve this control are benign. Systems that monitor banking transactions and immigration flows are effectively universal at the moment. CCTV has been used in one form or another since the middle of the 20th century. But current conversations about facial recognition tend to approach the technology as though it is something we are only starting to come to grips with now. This talk will look at examples from the court system to demonstrate that we have been grappling with the question of facial recognition for longer than we tend to think and that we are doing so by looking for an idealized future rather than at a complicated present.

Instructor

Jeff Heydon is author of Visibility and Control: Images and Certainty in Governing (Lexington, 2021), and teaches in the Communication Studies department at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Location

Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex, Community Pavilion (101 Father David Bauer Drive, Waterloo, ON)

Parking is free.
Download the facility map (PDF) to find facilities and parking lots.

Notes

Lecture Time : 130-300 pm
Lecture Cost: $16.00 + HST

Participants must register before the day of the lecture.
Laurier’s online registration system accepts Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Visa Debit, and MasterCard Debit.
You will only be able to purchase 1 seat at the time of registration. If looking to register more than 1 person, each registrant will require their own account to complete the registration.
Lectures are non-refundable

Contact

If you have any questions please email lifelonglearning@wlu.ca.