Hollywood has surely amazed its audience through its cinematic varieties. The use of technology and effects has always been a USP of many Hollywood movies. But we are not going to discuss everything; rather we would touch on the simple aspect, the use of biometric technology in movies. Also, in this post we will discuss the privacy issues related to celebrities and biometrics.
Many crime, science fiction, and action movies use technology to create images. But one fact you should know is that Hollywood always portrays biometrics the wrong way, at least most of the time.
That is how:
The police want to find a terrorist/criminal on the loose. They receive information that he/she is in a crowded market. Therefore, they quickly use a facial recognition system on top of CCTV images on the market to identify the person. Actually, facial recognition doesn’t work that fast. It works based on some algorithms and can only be used to match separate images like passport or ID card.
Secondly, identifying the face of a dead person through a photograph is not so easy since they normally have their eyes closed. Many biometric systems will not start monitoring without eyes. And for various other reasons such as light conditions, movement angles, distances, hairstyles, etc. finding a match is hard.
Remember James Bond or Jason Bourne using someone else’s fake fingerprints to scan through the machine and gain access to what they’re looking for? Well, actually, the machine could easily identify those fakes. Gaining access to a fingerprint or dismembered finger doesn’t get you in, since biometric machines are too smart for that. In addition, these agents have a busy day in the field, with the possibility that their hands are dirty or cut, faults that the machine could easily detect. If the authentication is wrong, the machine will request to scan all the fingers, enough time for the thieves to catch our hero/heroine.
Iris recognition is excellent and accurate, but its representation in movies is not as accurate. The scanners are powerful enough to scan eyes in fractions of a second and from 5 feet away. But in movies, actors first have to stand up, then position the eye, and then wait until the scanner scans the entire eye.
Second, many spies and agents wear an eyeball like the one Tom Cruise used to wear in Minority Report. The eyeballs are very sensitive and could easily lose their shape, thus falsifying the authentication.
Privacy
As the entertainment industry and show business grow, the privacy risks of celebrities grow as well. Once the face becomes absolutely important. Apps can now scan the image of a TV celebrity to give the celebrity’s name.
Insurance companies take body scans of actors in case they die during production. Therefore, studios could license the scanned face and paste it onto a digital doll with another actor’s movement affecting the original actor’s privacy and trust. This trend is hardly seen, but we all know how fast technology spreads!
In conclusion, do we all want to ignore reality while sitting inside a cinema to enjoy our movie? Things like technology, while incorrect, draw the audience’s eyes and allow them not to think about the details, which is fine. But our job is to share information and so we did.