Privacy in Public Spaces: The Reasonable Expectation of Privacy against the Dragnet Use of Facial Recognition Technology

Our society is steadily marching towards a world in which cameras equipped with facial recognition technology could be used to conduct constant and dragnet surveillance on people as they walk down the street. The law, as is usual in the field of privacy and emerging technologies, is lagging behind—no clear set of constitutional rules constrains law enforcement’s use of this powerful technology, especially because the prevailing axiom has been that there is no right to privacy in public spaces. This Article challenges the axiom and argues that the dragnet, realtime uses of facial recognition technology violates reasonable expectations of privacy.