**TL;DR – Privacy laws should better represent those who could potentially have their privacy breached instead of giving platforms a pass as long as they ask for consent.** There is a short word standing between more effective privacy laws and what we have now. Instead of having the ‘right to privacy,’ lawmakers have allowed people a ‘right *of* privacy.’ We have a choice to give consent or not for platforms to use our faces from photos, etc. – hence the prompts that often come up. The law seems to give platforms and companies more control over the privacy of our faces. There was no talk of privacy rights before 1890 when two Harvard Law scholars, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, wrote a Harvard Law Review article titled, “The Right to Privacy.” The article was a response to Kodak's unleashing of the portable camera in 1888. It stated, “instantaneous photographs…invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life.” To a certain extent, this is still true today and it’s exemplified by new technology. It might not be necessary to give consent to your friend taking a photo of you, but every time you unlock your iPhone with Face ID, you're giving up a part of yourself to who knows what. That should be in our control without sacrificing the convenience of a function like that. In efforts to keep this short, check out the source below for some wonderful information on Abigail Roberson’s famous case that was the first to bring up the question of privacy rights in court. https://gizmodo.com/how-a-19th-century-teenager-sparked-a-battle-over-who-o-1829572319

**Maybe safety and security are good enough reasons to not have _tons_ of control over the privacy of our faces?** - I do think it's very good to make sure we don't ever face unfair discrimination and inequalities from [facial recognition](https://www.miteksystems.com/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-biometrics), or even security breaches more generally. - There can also be negative consequences in the sense that people might not show up at protests, for instance, if they believe [their faces will be stored in a database](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/technology/facial-recognition-software.html) that could identify and potentially punish them. - However, I do wonder if the argument could be made that police being able to track down suspects more easily is worth giving up control over the privacy of our faces. Facial recognition [can stop terrorists](https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/Terrorism/Identifying-terrorist-suspects#:~:text=Biometric%20data%20%E2%80%93%20such%20as%20facial%20images%20and,terrorists%20and%20carry%20out%20successful%20investigations%20and%20prosecutions.) before they act, identify terrorists who are using fake identities, and [aid in](https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=ncjolt) other parts of investigations into actions of terrorism. - Could we have laws protecting protestors but little else, for the sake of security?