Here’s another of my cartoons from The Gist’s Christmas Recap of 2024. This one features the controversial urge to start preemptively judging innocent people going about their lives as potential criminals by scanning their faces for signs of criminality Facial recognition in the hands of law enforcement is a kind of digital phrenology in this cartoonist’s opinion. Can the Gardai be trusted to remain impartial and unbiased in the use of such technology? No.
Extract from The Gist’s article on facial recognition tech:
But then the Minister for Justice and the Gardaí were left flat-footed by the riot in Dublin in November. As explained in Yes, Minister, at times of crisis politicians are inclined to logical fallacy- “Something must be done, this is Something, therefore I must do it.”
So, hence the return of Facial Recognition technology. It may have had absolutely no function in preventing the riot (or investigating it), but it does have the benefit of being the Something (a piece of recently drafted and reluctantly abandoned legislation increasing police powers) which happens to be on the shelf and to hand.
More Cartoons:
- Trump Keir Starmer Downing Street Cartoon
- Green Party and the Irish General Election 2024
- Irish Government Housing Policy
- Irish Housing Crisis Cartoon
- Roderic O’Gorman and the Mother and Baby Homes
- Simon Harris and the National Children’s Hospital
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I’m Allan Cavanagh, Ireland’s highest-rated caricature artist, and I have been professionally producing caricatures and cartoon art for over 20 years.
Cartoon description: Gardai Facial Recognition Technology cartoon. Two uniformed Gardai face a bank of screens with streets on them. Each screen has figures with red rectangles around them. One Guard is turning to the other and saying “this is great, I’m terrible with faces.”