Identity Instrumentalized: Pattern Recognition as an Epistemology of Surveillance, 1960–66

The emergence of new surveillance practices is not solely a matter of technological and political developments. It is also intertwined with the production of scientific knowledge. This article traces how scientists in the 1960s developed some of the earliest computerized facial recognition techniques while covertly sponsored by a U.S. intelligence agency. The article situates their project within approaches from the technical field of pattern recognition. It demonstrates how the scientists, especially amid unsteady patronage relationships, reinforced a key assumption: that recognizing identity could be reduced to classifying specific features within a set of existing examples. As their ambitions grew over six years, the scientists transformed human identity into a scientific object tailored to their recognition techniques. How this transformation occurred foregrounds the epistemic underpinnings of surveillance technologies.