The subject of Facial Recognition used in surveillance has been the focus in many posts on this blog. Once again it's time to take one more look:
The revolution in digital technology has upended our society in many ways. Chief among these is that it has forced Americans to scramble to preserve the foundational balance of power between government and the people. . . According to a report by the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology, at least one in four of the nation’s thousands of state and local police departments have the ability to run facial recognition searches using the FBI’s or other systems. However, while facial recognition surveillance is being hastily deployed, oversight rules and basic limits on its use are lagging behind. . ." (2018)
(Animated illustration: CJ Ostrosky / POGO)
Unmasking the Realities of Facial Recognition
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"The world’s biggest technology companies can usually be counted on to oppose rules reining in new products, but some are making an exception for facial recognition software. The European Union and cities and states across the U.S. are taking up a wide range of ideas for restrictions or outright bans on this branch of the rapidly expanding field of artificial intelligence, including many that go further than the tech companies want.
> One question is whether regulation can protect innovation while preventing what Microsoft Corp. calls “a commercial race to the bottom.”
> Another is whose vision of privacy and security will prevail
". . . news reports that some U.S. police departments were using technology from a startup called Clearview AI have in particular exacerbated a backlash from privacy groups and lawmakers. The startup had scraped billions of photos from social media accounts without consent, using them to build a massive database of people not otherwise in law enforcement databases.
> The EU’s strict privacy rules, the General Data Protection Regulation, already forbid the use of remote biometric identification, a category that includes facial recognition, without consent from the targeted individual, with some public-safety exceptions. New legislation now being worked on is expected to include requirements for companies or agencies wishing to deploy such systems to submit the software’s datasets to public authorities for review before release
> In the U.S., bills involving facial recognition have been introduced in 11 state legislatures, ranging from a proposed ban on real-time use of the technology in Michigan to a requirement that stores in Vermont notify consumers if a system is in use. A handful of cities, including San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts, have banned the use of the technology by their police or other agencies altogether. At the federal level, lawmakers from both major parties have discussed bills to force a moratorium on adoption of facial recognition systems by government agencies, NONE HAVE MOVED FORWARD
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RELATED CONTENT ON THIS BLOG
30 August 2018
Surveillance & Facial Recognition: Questions + Statements From Experts
Our core concern is that policing in the United States today functions without effective oversight or accountability. There’s a real deficit of trust. And in that ecosystem, it’s really hard to see how any legal requirement could be applied in a way that would truly protect people.
That's one of the concerns in a report from The Verge yesterday
How should we regulate facial recognition?
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/29
Facial recognition is everywhere — airports, police stations, and built into the largest cloud platforms in the world — with few federal rules to govern how it’s used. That’s been true for years, but a string of embarrassing stories in recent months has driven home exactly how dangerous the technology can be in the wrong hands, and it’s led to new calls for regulation. Even Microsoft, one of the largest providers, has called on Congress to place some kind of restriction on how and where the technology can be used.
That's one of the concerns in a report from The Verge yesterday
How should we regulate facial recognition?
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/29
Facial recognition is everywhere — airports, police stations, and built into the largest cloud platforms in the world — with few federal rules to govern how it’s used. That’s been true for years, but a string of embarrassing stories in recent months has driven home exactly how dangerous the technology can be in the wrong hands, and it’s led to new calls for regulation. Even Microsoft, one of the largest providers, has called on Congress to place some kind of restriction on how and where the technology can be used.
How should we regulate facial recognition?
We asked the experts
That leaves reformers with a difficult question: how can we fix facial recognition?
We put the question to five leading figures on both sides of the policy fight.Is it time to regulate facial recognition?
> Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the Center for Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law. The Center’s Perpetual Lineup project includes a model bill for regulating facial recognition, focused on restricting police access to driver’s license and mug shot databases.
> Brian Brackeen, CEO of the facial recognition company Kairos, an outspoken advocate for regulation in the industry.
> Evan Selinger, philosophy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Together with law professor Woodrow Herzog, Selinger has called for a complete ban on the use of facial recognition, in both public and private use cases, out of concern that the technology is being normalized
> Benji Hutchinson, VP of federal operations at NEC America. A leading vendor for federal facial recognition contracts, NEC has resisted calls for federal restrictions on the technology.
Should police use facial recognition?
> Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. The ACLU has called for a moratorium on government use of facial recognition.
Here >
CASE IN POINT + THE SPOILER ALERT: As an article published by OneZero put it, “the NOPD has back-channel access to the state’s facial recognition program.” According to the report, the police department relied on technology operated by the Louisiana State Police after local investigators sent a wanted poster with a photo of the suspect to the state fusion center.
And that's how the NOPD is going to pretend its previous denials weren't misleading. Here's how it responded to The Lens when contacted about its apparent years of misdirection.
In a statement to The Lens last week, a department spokesperson said that although it didn’t own facial recognition software itself, it was granted access to the technology through “state and federal partners.”
New Orleans PD Finally Admits It Uses Facial Recognition Tech After Denying It For Years
from the cracks-open-COP-TO-ENGLISH-dictionary dept
Another large American law enforcement organization has belatedly admitted it uses facial recognition tech after spending years denying it.
Last month, it was the Los Angeles Police Department, which had denied using the tech all the way up until 2019. But records obtained by the Los Angeles Times showed the department had used it 30,000 times over the past decade.
When confronted, the LAPD's assistant chief claimed the last two denials issued by him and his department were "mistakes."
Welcome to the "I guess we'll come clean" club, New Orleans.
ere
