Seattle-area county say it's first US county to pass facial recognition ban
Dive Brief:
- King County, Washington — home to 2.3 million people in and around Seattle — will not allow government acquisition and use of facial recognition software, including by the Sheriff's office, per an ordinance the county council unanimously approved last week.
The Smart 5G City Means Permanent Surveillance and Risk
Dive Insight:
Facial recognition systems can in part analyze surveillance images to enable law enforcement or other actors to identify individuals. But despite the possible contributions of such capabilities in criminal investigations, the technology prompts invasion of privacy concerns. . .
Minimal guardrails exist at the state or federal level, and local jurisdictions have increasingly taken matters into their own hands.
In King County, "The use of facial recognition technology by government agencies poses distinct threats to our residents, including potential misidentification, bias, and the erosion of our civil liberties," said Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles, who sponsored the legislation, in a statement. "The use or misuse of these technologies has potentially devastating consequences which the new ordinance will help to prevent."
The King County decision came about two weeks after Amazon said it would extend a moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software indefinitely. Amazon last June put in place a one-year moratorium.
Recognizing the debates happening in localities across the country, the National League of Cities (NLC) issued a report earlier this year with information regarding how cities might approach the use and regulation of facial recognition technology.
"[M]any cities across the country are wrestling with the decision on how they approach it. Especially in the absence of federal guidance, cities and counties are really left to regulate the use themselves," said Brooks Rainwater, senior executive of NLC's Center for City Solutions. "We're in support of cities looking at the scope of facial recognition and deciding whether this is a tool that should be used in their community, or on the flip side whether or not it should be banned from either municipal use or all uses within that city." NLC does not take its own stance on whether or not a city ought to employ the technology.
King County's limitations on the technology, like most other localities that have taken action, does not cover private use of the technology. On the opposite coast, Baltimore is now considering a ban similar to Portland, Oregon's that could prohibit private use. The Security Industry Association, which counts Microsoft among its members, is speaking out against the scope Baltimore is proposing.
The debate has also elevated to the state level. Massachusetts passed a series of statewide restrictions in May on how police can and cannot use the technology in criminal investigations, and a bill is currently moving through Maine's state legislature that would limit the technology's use by state and local law enforcement.
Federal action may be on the horizon as well.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., last year helped introduce multiple pieces of legislation that would respectively establish a moratorium on the federal government's use of the technology until Congress outlines specific uses for the data; rescind federal support from state and local law enforcement entities using biometric technology; and prohibit private companies from "harvesting or profiting from" customer or employee biometric data without permission.
Merkley has plans to reintroduce the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which was brought forth last June but did not make it to a vote, Morning Brew reported on Friday.
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