Recognizing Everyday Activism: Understanding Resistance to Facial Recognition

The widespread implementation of facial recognition systems as a tool for live surveillance is challenging the ability of individuals to be anonymous in public, and through this, addressing the level of privacy one has the right to expect in a public space. Among those attempting to draw attention to this discussion is a group of artists and designers, whose contribution involves the creation of anti-surveillance practices and artefacts. Given that these have been viewed as ingenious and often entertaining, but hardly as viable solutions to surveillance, it may be tempting to ignore them as failed resistance. This, however, would miss the importance of, and contribution to, the larger discussion on everyday resistance and activism. This paper argues that these systems are examples of surveillance resistance, that their role is to form part of an online discourse on surveillance and as such become a form of digital resistance. Furthermore, this paper argues that through the form and nature of their contribution, they have the ability to further nuance the discussion of resistance in that they become an example of everyday activism. By recognizing their true contribution, we may move beyond mere trivialization of these anti-surveillance artefacts to be able to study digital resistance.