A member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has proposed a ban on the use of facial recognition technologies by city agencies. The proposal has received support from the president of the Board of Supervisors, Norman Yee.
Gregory Barber writes about the proposed ban on Wired:
Aaron Peskin, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors, proposed the ban Tuesday as part of a suite of rules to enhance surveillance oversight. In addition to the ban on facial recognition technology, the ordinance would require city agencies to gain the board’s approval before buying new surveillance technology, putting the burden on city agencies to publicly explain why they want the tools as well as the potential harms. It would also require an audit of any existing surveillance tech—things like gunshot-detection systems, surveillance cameras, or automatic license plate readers—in use by the city; officials would have to report annually on how the technology was used, community complaints, and with whom they share the data.
Those rules would follow similar ordinances passed in nearby Oakland and Santa Clara County. But with facial recognition, Peskin argues an outright ban makes more sense than regulating its use. “I have yet to be persuaded that there is any beneficial use of this technology that outweighs the potential for government actors to use it for coercive and oppressive ends,” he says.
Facial recognition technology is increasingly common for unlocking our phones and tagging our Facebook friends, but it remains rife with potential bias, especially around identifying people of color. In the hands of government, critics like Peskin argue, it enables all-too-easy access to real-time surveillance, especially given the availability of large databases of faces and names (think your driver’s license or LinkedIn).
“This is the first piece of legislation that I’ve seen that really takes facial recognition technology as seriously as it is warranted and treats it as uniquely dangerous,” says Woodrow Hartzog, professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University.
