LOS ANGELES—Adult entertainment guide Slixa.com is addressing the growing problem facial recognition technology when it comes to sex work privacy in a new blog post.
Writer Laura LeMoon’s Slixa.com article, “What Facial Recognition Software Means for Sex Workers,” explores how this new online tool is opening the door to safety and privacy threats, and what that means for the future of sex work in general.
“For sex workers, (who the world over are more often than not highly criminalized) this could have even more detrimental and devastating effects to our abilities to make a living and provide for ourselves and our families,” writes LeMoon.
“If a sex worker got caught up in the legal system, then it would be very easy for law enforcement to find a digital trail of crimes committed online. Every sex worker with an online ad would now be easy to connect to the crime of alleged prostitution if and when building a case.
“Even worse, that cop who pulls you over for speeding or a broken tail light can simply go on an iPad or smartphone and run a current photo against a database of other photos of your face taken from your online presence.”
LeMoon argues “the internet is rapidly becoming a less and less predictable means for sex workers to make income and survive, and facial recognition software only compounds these vulnerabilities… without the surface web, the options for sex workers to advertise online would have to move completely to the dark web.”
What can be done? “Facial Recognition is scary, but it's also something that isn't going away. In fact, it only stands to become a bigger and bigger part of our daily lives,” says LeMoon, who refers to George Orwell’s eerily prescient novel 1984: “One of the [book’s] key messages seems to be about us as a society not becoming so complacent that we end up complicit in our own demise as a civilization.”
Read the full Slixa.com blog post at Slixa.com.
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