Passersby stroll under a monitoring cam that belongs to a facial acknowledgment innovation test at a train station in Berlin. A restriction in San Francisco would avoid the city’s cops from utilizing comparable innovation.
Steffi Loos/Getty Images
The city of San Francisco authorized a regulation on Tuesday disallowing the cops department and other city firms from utilizing facial acknowledgment innovation on citizens. It’s the very first such restriction of the innovation in the nation.
The regulation, which gone by a vote of 8 to 1, likewise develops a procedure for the cops department to divulge what monitoring innovation they utilize, such as license plate readers and cell-site simulators that can track citizens’ motions in time. But it songs out facial acknowledgment as too hazardous to citizens’ civil liberties to even think about utilizing.
“Facial surveillance technology is a huge legal and civil liberties risk now due to its significant error rate, and it will be worse when it becomes perfectly accurate mass surveillance tracking us as we move about our daily lives,” stated Brian Hofer, the executive director of personal privacy advocacy group Secure Justice. The group was signed up with by ACLU of Northern California and a number of other advocacy groups in supporting the expense, which was presented by Supervisor Aaron Peskin.
The restriction is a very first, however San Francisco isn’t alone. Several other cities are thinking about facial acknowledgment restrictions, consisting of Oakland and Berkeley in California, in addition to Somerville, Massachusetts. It’s part of a bigger reaction versus the innovation from personal privacy supporters, in addition to legislators and even other tech business.
For example, Microsoft asked the federal government in July to control facial acknowledgment innovation prior to it gets more extensive, and stated it decreased to offer the innovation to police. As it is, the innovation is on track to end up being prevalent in airports and shopping mall and other tech business like Amazon are offering the innovation to cops departments.
“The ban sends a signal to law enforcement around the country that if they want to use facial recognition technology, they’ll have to convince the public that it can be used in a rights respecting manner, and that the bias issues with the technology have been addressed,” stated Mana Azarmi, a personal privacy law supporter at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
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How San Francisco’s ban could impact facial recognition…
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The San Francisco Police Department said in a statement that it doesn’t use facial recognition technology. Hofer said that’s his organization’s understanding as well.
“The San Francisco Police Department’s mission must be judiciously balanced with the need to protect civil rights and civil liberties, including privacy and free expression,” the department said in its statement after the ordinance passed. “While we were happy to see some of our concerns addressed in the legislation, until the policy is put into practice, it is unclear what the full impact will be on department operations.”
Tony Montoya, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said the union doesn’t oppose the ban outright. But it’s concerned that it will take away a useful investigation tool.
“There might be unintended consequences that may inhibit investigation of suspicious criminal activity,” Montoya said. He added that police don’t make arrests based on leads from electronic investigation tools without thoroughly investigating them first.
Banning the police from using facial recognition outright takes away a potentially valuable public safety tool, said Adam Scott Wandt, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who advises police departments on surveillance technology.
It shouldn’t be unfettered, he said, but police have legitimate reasons to use the technology at large events that attract outside attention, like the Super Bowl, or at ports of entry where people are entering the country.
“Governments should be able to use facial recognition,” Wandt said, “with safeguards in place.”
Wandt agreed with civil liberties advocates that a major point of concern is how long government entities keep facial recognition records and other surveillance data. The longer they exist, the more comprehensive an understanding you have of people’s movements over time.
Several other cities in California and beyond have already enacted laws that create transparency requirements for surveillance technology that are similar to the one’s in San Francisco’s ordinance. They require police departments to explain which technologies they are using and submit to a public comment process.
The requirement to go public about surveillance tools is about building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve, said Nathan Sheard, a grassroots advocacy organizer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“That trust requires a clear and transparent process for how we decided whether we will or will not acquire surveillance technology,” Sheard said.
Originally published May 14, 5 a.m. PT.
Updates, 3:03 p.m.: Adds that the ordinance passed; 3:17 p.m.: Adds statement from San Francisco Police Officers Association; 4:06 p.m.: Adds comment from Nathan Sheard and new comment from Mana Azarmi; 4:34 p.m.: Adds new comment from Brian Hofer; 7:19 p.m.: Adds new comment from SFPD.
