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How Safe Is Your Face? The Pros and Cons of Having Facial Recognition Everywhere
Walk into a shop, board a plane, log into your bank, or scroll through your social media feed, and chances are you might be asked to scan your face. Facial recognition and other kinds of face-based biometric technology are becoming an increasingly common form of identification. The technology is promoted as quick, convenient and secure — but at the same time it has raised alarm over privacy violations. For instance, some major retailers such as Kmart have been found to have broken the law by using the technology without customer consent.
So are we seeing a dangerous technological overreach or the future of security? And what does it mean for families, especially when even children are expected to prove their identity with nothing more than their face? Things get even murkier when it comes to children. Due to new government legislation, social media platforms may well introduce face-based age verification technology, framing it as a way to keep kids safe online.
At the same time, schools are trialling facial recognition for everything from classroom entry to paying in the cafeteria. Yet concerns about data misuse remain. In one incident, Microsoft was accused of mishandling children’s biometric data. For children, facial recognition is quietly becoming the default, despite very real risks.
Parents Renew Fight Against New Jersey’s Storage of Infant Biometric Identifiers
In Trenton, New Jersey, a group of parents has revived a constitutional challenge against the state’s long-standing practice of retaining blood taken from newborns, arguing that it violates property and privacy rights in an era of accelerating AI and genetic analysis. The amended complaint, filed Oct. 6 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, follows U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner’s August ruling dismissing the earlier lawsuit on the ground that the plaintiffs failed to show a possessory interest in their children’s residual “blood spot” samples.
The parents contend that the state’s mandatory newborn-screening program unlawfully keeps residual blood samples for years without informed parental consent. “People’s property and privacy interests in their blood and genetic material do not dissipate when that blood is taken physically from inside their bodies by state action,” the parents’ attorneys wrote. “The children never voluntarily gave their blood to the state, and New Jersey never sought or received consent.”
Under New Jersey law, hospitals must draw several drops of blood from each newborn’s heel within 24 to 48 hours of birth and send the sample to the New Jersey Department of Health’s Newborn Screening Laboratory to test for 61 rare but serious metabolic and genetic disorders, including disorders such as spinal muscular atrophy and sickle-cell disease. More than 110,000 babies are tested annually in the state. What happens after the screening has become the center of controversy. Until recently, the state stored identified blood spot samples for up to 23 years.
Battle for Vaccines in Massachusetts Schools: Mandate Them or Allow Religious Exemptions?
With vaccine-preventable diseases like measles surging nationwide — over 1,000 cases in 30 states this year — Northeastern states such as Connecticut, Maine, and New York have banned religious exemptions for school vaccines, pushing kindergarten rates above 97%. Massachusetts takes a different path, permitting religious exemptions easily, fueling State House debates on balancing individual rights and community safety.
Massachusetts law (Chapter 76, Section 15) requires vaccinations for school entry, like MMR and DTaP, but allows religious exemptions via a simple written parental statement of conflicting beliefs — no verification needed. Medical exemptions require a doctor’s note. State data shows 96%+ kindergarten immunization rates for 2024-2025, but religious exemptions hit 1.3% — about 870 kids — the highest since the 1980s, with clusters in Western Massachusetts and Cape Cod risking herd immunity below 95%.
In the 2025-2026 session, bills vary widely. House Bill 2554 (Rep. Andy Vargas, D-Haverhill) and Senate S.1557 aim to eliminate religious exemptions, mandating vaccines except medically, with school reporting; backed by the Massachusetts Medical Society for aligning with neighbors and curbing outbreaks.
Realty Group’s Plan to Install Plate Readers in Brookline Sparks Privacy Concerns
Chestnut Hill Realty is installing Flock license plate reader cameras along Independence Drive, on the border of South Brookline and West Roxbury, citing a rise in package and retail theft. However, the move has alarmed civil liberties advocates, who warn that the technology poses a greater threat than petty crime. The ACLU of Massachusetts says the cameras — marketed as neighborhood safety tools — enable broad government surveillance by collecting data on everyone’s movements, not just those suspected of wrongdoing.
Kade Crockford, director of technology for the Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, says government agencies, in this case working with private companies, are building massive databases to track people’s movements across cities, states, and the nation.
“That raises very serious constitutional questions,” Crockford said. The issue surfaced on Sept. 29, when the Brookline Police Department discussed a proposed Memorandum of Understanding with Flock at a meeting of the Police Commissioners Advisory Committee.
Boris Johnson Rejects Claim His Government Did Not Prepare for Pandemic School Closures
Boris Johnson rejected claims that his government failed to prepare for school closures at the outbreak of the pandemic, telling the COVID-19 inquiry that it would be “amazing” if the Department for Education had not realized that plans were needed. Gavin Williamson, the then education secretary, had told the inquiry that he hadn’t acted sooner because “there was no suggestion that the Department for Education should prepare a plan or a policy for mass school closures.”
In testimony as part of the inquiry’s investigation into the impact on children and young people, Johnson made it clear he initially believed school closures would be necessary only at the peak of the pandemic, until scientific advice changed to say closures would help stop COVID-19’s rapid spread. “It felt to me as though children, who are not vulnerable to Covid, were paying a huge, huge price to protect the rest of society. It was an awful thing. I wish we had found another solution,” Johnson said.
In his testimony last week, the former education secretary Gavin Williamson told the inquiry that Johnson’s government had made “many mistakes” regarding school closures. He also said that Johnson often “chose the NHS over children.”
