the majority of Americans appear in a
facial recognition database potentially
accessible by their local Police
Department and federal government
agencies like ice or the FBI it's not
something you likely opted into but as a
vow there's no way to be sure exactly
who has access to your likeness for the
past ten years or so face recognition
face surveillance has moved from the
realm of science fiction to the realm of
science reality but in light of recent
protests for racial justice facial
recognition technologies have come under
scrutiny for the way in which they're
deployed by police departments around
the country protestors worried they're
being tracked and communities of colors
hear this tech will exacerbate bias
nobody can get clear answers about who
is using facial recognition and how
these technologies do not work the same
across different groups of people and
oftentimes the people that in response I
be M Amazon and Microsoft have all
stated that they'll either stop
developing this tech or stop selling it
to law enforcement until regulations are
in place and in late June Democratic
members of Congress sought to make these
pledges permanent introducing a bill
banning government use of facial
recognition technologies but
lesser-known companies like Clear View
AI NAC and rank-one plan to pursue
business as usual and say this tech has
an important role to play in the justice
system
somebody violently harms somebody else
that is that is an ongoing threat to
public safety and tools that can be used
safely should be available whether or
not they support a ban researchers and
activists across the political spectrum
are increasingly speaking out about
privacy concerns algorithmic bias and
the lack of transparency and regulation
around this tech I don't think we should
take an approach that a technology is
inherently good or bad but I'm not
comfortable at the moment with the lack
of regulation having the technology they
used among law enforcement this is a
type of technology that has profound
implications for the future of human
society and we need to have a real
conversation about whether we can have
it in our society at all
facial recognition technologies use
biometric information that is body
measurements specific to each individual
to match a face from a photo or a video
to a database of known faces this
database could be composed of mug shots
driver's license photos or even photos
uploaded to social media it's likely
that you already use this tech in your
daily life as advances in artificial
intelligence over the past decade have
greatly improved its capabilities every
time you use your face to unlock your
smartphone except Facebook's photo
tagging suggestions or sort through a
google photos album by person you're
seeing facial recognition at work this
isn't really the type of thing that
lawmakers are seeking to ban and some
are definitely eager to see the everyday
uses expand I think there are a lot of
applications that are potentially quite
exciting you know going to a grocery
store and being able just to walk out of
the store without having to pay you know
the store just identifies you and
automatically debits you but whether
you're tagging photos are searching
through a vast government database it's
the same technology at work and that has
others concerned we're worried that
people are going to start to normalize
this technology and that could bleed
into acceptance on the government side
which is extremely concerning real-time
surveillance of video footage is often
considered the most worrisome use case
right now the tech is far from a hundred
percent accurate but in theory using
facial recognition on video feeds would
make it possible to alert police when a
suspect shows their face in public or
track where anybody is going and who
they're associating with China and
Russia already do this and some US
cities like Detroit and Chicago have
acquired tech that would make it
possible
Detroit's video surveillance program
started in 2016 when security cameras
were placed at eight gas stations in
2017 the department bought facial
recognition software giving them the
capability to scan these cameras video
feeds over the last under three years it
has rapidly expanded they have
surveillance helicopters access to
drones traffic lights with surveillance
capabilities after heated debate to
trade banned the use of facial
recognition on live video so the city
cannot track people in real-time
Chicago promises that it doesn't do this
either but throughout the u.s.
using facial recognition on photographs
is still common those San Francisco
Boston and a number of other cities have
outlawed all government use of this tech
so we should not forget right San
Francisco was the first city to ban face
recognition the place where the sausage
is being made did not want the sausage
right private companies like Walmart
Lowe's and Target have also trialed
facial recognition systems to catch
shoplifters though they say they're not
currently using it and US airports are
starting to roll out face scanners at
the gate so passengers need not show
their passport there's also potential to
use similar tech and targeted
advertising something that Walmart is
experimenting with in partnership with a
startup called cooler screens which
infers a shoppers age and gender in
order to show more relevant ads well the
screens don't identify individuals it's
not hard to imagine a system that could
a thought that puts many on edge I think
many people will be concerned and
creeped out but will eventually suck it
up and get used to it if someone can
come up with a way in the private sector
to ensure that this is not easy for
criminals or the government just to take
advantage off and I can see people
becoming quite comfortable with it the
global facial recognition market was
valued at three point four billion
dollars in 2019 and it's projected to
grow steadily over the coming years
however in the wake of George Floyd's
death and protests against racism and
police brutality Amazon Microsoft and
IBM made headlines for pulling back on
police access to facial recognition
technology but while these tech giants
certainly have clout as well as other
significant ties to law enforcement
they're not actually the most important
companies in this specific market so
first off IBM did not have a real
product in this space Microsoft and
Amazon neither then were big players in
law enforcement space they did not have
a large line of business there so one
could call it a bit of virtual signaling
after announcing a year-long moratorium
on police use of its facial recognition
software called recognition Amazon says
it doesn't know how many police
departments actually use it
recognition is widely used in the
private sector but previously only one
law enforcement customer was listed on
its website for its part microsoft says
it does not currently
it's facial recognition software to
police and that it promises not to until
there are federal regulations in place
IBM took the boldest stance of the three
promising to stop research and
development on facial recognition all
together but this tech wasn't really
generating much revenue for the company
anyway
but many lesser-known companies are
providing this technology to the police
on a large scale and they've made no
such promises to stop upsetting privacy
advocates my view is that it's
fundamentally incompatible with
democracy and with basic human rights to
have technology like deja recognition in
the hands of law enforcement Clearview
AI is a huge player in this space
founded in 2017 Clearview has amassed a
database of over three billion images
scraped from millions of websites and
social media platforms from venmo to
facebook its catalog is far more
comprehensive than anything that came
before it and the company says it's used
by over 2,400 law enforcement agencies
in the u.s. at the local state and
federal levels because we're like the
largest provider in the space and we've
had so much experience we feel that it
would be a shame and a really a big
mistake to take it away because all
these crimes would go unsolved the way
Clearview works is simple you just
upload a picture and a system searches
its database for matches so Katie do you
mind if I show you how it works on your
photo that you supplied earlier go for
it so it just takes a matter of seconds
you pick the photo that you want to
search which is that one and as you can
see it's uploading it it's finding
photos and here there's 8 photos out of
over three billion that match and you
can see they all come with a link to the
original I see a picture from my
personal website an old news article
CNBC's website all things I knew were
out there but not things on you were a
part of a facial recognition database
accessible to thousands of police
departments the clear D system itself
does not reveal my name but the links
point to websites that do so we don't
actually identify someone we help you
identifies
investigator well Google YouTube Twitter
and Facebook have all sent cease and
desist letters to Clear View the company
says that because these images are
public it has a right to compile them at
the end of the day it's a search engine
just like Google so things a little bit
of hypocritical of them to then send a
cease and desist but fundamentally it is
publicly available information other
players include NEC the one hundred and
twenty-one year old information
technology and electronics giant that
sells its software to about twenty US
law enforcement agencies and ranked one
which says it supports about twenty five
different law enforcement agencies we
think face recognition is a tool that
empowers people when used correctly if
it wasn't our technology it absolutely
would be somebody else's technology
advocates have raised the alarm on
facial recognition for years and now
their concerns are gaining momentum
one of the most oft cited issues is the
general lack of transparency when it
comes to exactly who is using facial
recognition and for what ends I wish I
could tell you how many police
departments are using this technology
researchers at Georgetown discovered
that Detroit was one of the cities using
facial recognition they have been using
that technology for over a year before
the community got wind of it so because
we don't have this transparency I'm not
able to answer this question of House
widespread this technology is that lack
of transparency maybe by design the
concern here I think for the police is
we don't want to show our hand to
criminals the idea is well if we have to
be more transparent about what
technology we use then people will adapt
their behavior and I think in in a
functioning democracy that takes civil
liberties seriously that's a price
sometimes we have to pay
what's more though the tetris isn't
always accurate and when it's wrong it
reveals bias a 20-18 study by the ACLU
tested Amazon's recognition software on
members of Congress running their images
through a mugshot database it
incorrectly identified twenty-eight of
them as criminals and while only 20% of
Congress members are people of color
they comprised 39% of the false matches
this report came on the heels of a 2018
study by belem weenie and
co-author Tim net gay brew which
demonstrated that software by Microsoft
IBM and Chinese company face plus plus
frequently misgendered woman and people
of color I was working on an art
installation that used face tracking
technology it didn't work that well on
my face until I put on a white mask and
so that led to some questions others
that did detect my face labelled me male
I am NOT a man Balam weenie and Gabe
roof found that the systems they tested
were nearly 100% accurate when
identifying the gender of white men but
when identify and gender and darker
skinned woman microsoft system failed
about 20% of the time an IBM system
failed about 1/3 of the time after the
study came out Microsoft and IBM trained
their algorithms on a more diverse set
of faces and improved their error rates
but when Boehm weenie conducted a
follow-up study using Amazon recognition
it's still misgendered dark skinned
woman nearly 1/3 of the time Amazon
unlike Microsoft where IBM actually
actively attempted to discredit our
research and we were really fortunate
that more than 70 AI researchers and
practitioners came to say no this is
rigorous peer reviewed in fact even
award-winning work the issues that are
being pointed out are a core to our
field like Amazon noted in their
critique of balaam weenie study Brendan
Claire CEO of Rank 1 says that gender
identification is a different technology
than matching a face to a database of
faces obviously gender estimation is
sort of a different type of application
but it never should be errors like that
and the errors they showed we're
egregious and those are not
representative of the technology our
technology is about 99% accurate on
gender estimation across all races he
says that claims of algorithmic racism
and sexism are misleading it's an
important topic it's one that has been
susceptible to a lot of misinformation
both rank-one and NEC recently made the
news after their algorithms
misidentified a black man in Detroit as
a suspect in a shoplifting case the man
robert williams spent 30 hours in jail
Claire says that rank ones technology
was misused in this case because a match
is not probable cause for arrest the
investigating officers did not collect
independent evidence if the case of mr.
Williams is not an isolated incident
if there is a pattern that emerges we
will get out of this market Clearview
says a recent test showed its system is
ninety nine point six percent accurate
and exhibits no racial bias whatsoever
previously the ACLU has called clear
views accuracy assertions absurd and
challenge the company's testing
methodology the Detroit Police Chief
pacing scrutiny over Williams arrest so
that if the department relied solely on
its facial recognition software it would
miss identify suspects about 96% of the
time the huge difference in stated
accuracy rates versus actual accuracy
rates could be because these systems are
tested using relatively high quality
images but when they're deployed in the
real world security camera footage can
be too low-quality to yield accurate
results but just for context the the
most important thing this is much more
accurate than the human eye and I think
there's only beneficial things that can
happen once you get to this level of
accuracy but even if a system could
achieve perfection others can think of a
whole host of not so beneficial
consequences it's dangerous when it
works and when it doesn't but even if
the technology worked a hundred percent
of the time it would be extremely
dangerous because at its logical
conclusion what it really does is
eliminate privacy and anonymity in
public space which is something that no
free society should ever tolerate some
are more optimistic about the role that
facial recognition could play in society
face recognition technology could be
installed between evidence like look
Your Honor I know I'm being accused by
three witnesses but there is an image of
me at Walmart at this moment it cannot
be me one of them is a facial
recognition system and it only included
images of children that parents had
volunteers in the case of a missing
child that's the kind of situation where
I imagine that
people see the value of it but still
others ask are the serious drawbacks
worth it
there is the scenario that we would hope
to be true which is this flawless system
is used in police force that doesn't
have a history of systemic racism but
this is not the world we live in and so
I can understand wanting to use whatever
tools are available but we have to ask
are we bringing the correct tool to the
job and so it's one thing if oh it
worked out how you thought but at what
cost how much data did you have to
collect we believe is extremely
dangerous in a predominantly black city
especially it doesn't make any sense to
double down on something like this at a
time when the nation is calling for some
systemic changes within policing and to
undo systems of brutality and racial
violence what most experts agree on is
that at the very least more regulation
and transparency is needed many also say
this text should not be used to help
solve low-level crimes like shoplifting
or drug use though some concede that it
may eventually be appropriate to use
facial recognition on still photos to
help solve violent crimes or kidnappings
but using it on video footage is often
considered a red line we believe
strongly that the use of facial
recognition algorithms to analyze video
data either in real time or to look back
at historic video footage but that ought
to be banned permanently in the United
States that we should just never be
engaged in that type of surveillance in
general a federal moratorium on this
tech could garner significant bipartisan
support last year an ACLU poll in
Massachusetts revealed that nearly 8 and
10 voters supported a statewide
moratorium which included 84 percent of
Democrats 82 percent of Independence and
50 percent of Republicans we're kind of
in this sweet spot right now where the
technology's not quite good enough to
really be able to effectively achieve
the goal of cataloguing every person's
every public movement habit an
association but it's getting there so
this is the perfect time actually for
lawmakers to step in and say you know
what we're just gonna draw
bright red line in the sand here and say
we're not going to go any further until
we have a deliberate conversation about
this but some worry that big tech will
use this time to lobby for overly
permissive regulations we're going to be
on the lookout for legislation that is
clearly backed or sponsored by companies
like Amazon and Microsoft where they're
lawyers and lobbyists have gone over the
text to make sure that it's friendly to
their business model in some form or
another facial recognition is likely
here to stay
we'll probably continue using it to
unlock our phones and tag our pictures
it may become commonplace to use it to
confirm our identity at the airport or
grocery store checkout line maybe we'll
even come to accept a world full of
hyper targeted advertising screens named
one technology we've we've developed and
stopped this genie is not going back in
the bottle it really is just going to be
coming down to how well do we manage it
but to what extent governments and
police departments can access this
technology remains an open question and
that's where the real debate lies some
think the political environment right
now presents a real opportunity to be an
access to this tech at all levels of
government I think in Congress we have a
real shot at getting strong legislation
to put at least an immediate moratorium
on local state and federal use of facial
recognition and I'm optimistic that we
will get a ban on facial recognition in
the United States
others predict legislation will stop
short of a ban
I think there will be many members who
take the view that the technology has
many worrying applications and civil
libertarian issues but that it also is
ultimately useful with the right
guidelines in place and crafting these
guidelines soon will be essential
because technology like facial
recognition is advancing at a rapid clip
it may be too late to turn back the
clock altogether but some privacy
advocates say that this debate is
emblematic of the idea that just because
we can build something doesn't mean that
we should sometimes algorithmic justice
means you don't make it you don't deploy
it I think these technology companies
need to have a sit down and ask
themselves before they innovate is this
something that necessarily needs to
exist in the world