Law bill seeks to ban Feds’ use of facial recognition tech • The Register

A gaggle of 16 US lawmakers right this moment reintroduced a invoice that will ban the nation’s federal businesses from utilizing facial recognition and different biometric surveillance applied sciences.

The Democrat-pushed proposal additionally goals to restrict state and native governments and legislation enforcement businesses’ use of those surveillance measures by chopping off federal funding until they enact their very own bans on the tech.

Along with cracking down on facial recognition, the draft Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act of 2023 would additionally prohibit any federal entity from utilizing voice and gait recognition applied sciences, which can be utilized to determine folks by the best way they stroll or run. The invoice doesn’t, nonetheless, prohibit businesses from utilizing fingerprints or palm prints.

Lawmakers introduced legislation with the identical identify over the past Congress, but it surely died in committee.

Underneath the 2023 proposal, federal {dollars} couldn’t be spent on biometric surveillance. Particularly, it might make it unlawful for any federal company or official to “purchase, possess, entry, or use” any biometric surveillance system or data that is derived from video or audio techniques operated by a third-party.

The yr is 2023, however we live by way of 1984

These bans can solely be lifted by an act of Congress. Nevertheless, such an act has to incorporate some very particular particulars about which entities are permitted to make use of the surveillance system and for what functions. 

Any exemptions would even have to incorporate guidelines on information retention, management sharing and entry limits, and put in place auditing necessities in addition to “rigorous protections for due course of, privateness, free speech and affiliation, and racial, gender, and non secular fairness.”

“The yr is 2023, however we live by way of 1984,” stated Senator Edward Markey (D-MA), who launched this and final classes’ payments, in a statement.

“Biometric information assortment poses critical dangers of privateness invasion and discrimination, and People know they need to not need to forgo private privateness for security,” he added. “As we work to make our nation extra equitable, we can’t ignore the applied sciences that stand in the best way of progress and perpetuate injustice.”

The laws comes as public agencies and legislation enforcement increase their use of AI and facial recognition, regardless of these applied sciences getting used to wrongfully arrest folks of coloration based mostly on false matches.

Home Consultant Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) launched a companion invoice to the Senate model it within the Home. Different co-sponsors embrace Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Cori Bush (D-MO), Greg Casar (D-TX), Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).

Dozens of civil and digital rights teams have additionally endorsed the laws. This consists of Combat for the Future, which has known as for an outright ban on legislation enforcement use of facial recognition.

The coalition has additionally sounded the alarm on firms and personal entities’ use of the expertise on their workers and the general public.

“Facial recognition has continued to hurt susceptible communities and erode our privateness, making this laws extra essential than ever,” Caitlin Seeley George, Combat for the Future managing director, stated in a statement.

“There have been extra circumstances of misidentification resulting in wrongful arrest of Black males and extra surveillance of individuals exercising their proper to protest; databases of peoples’ most delicate data have been breached, exposing irreplaceable information to unhealthy actors; and extra authorities businesses, from the IRS to the TSA, have adopted facial recognition to trace our each transfer,” she continued. “We can’t afford to attend any longer to place this invasive expertise in examine, and any lawmaker who claims to care about privateness and justice should show it by supporting this laws.”

In the meantime, FBI pushes for drone surveillance

Combat for the Future and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) each supported the facial recognition ban invoice within the final Congress. 

“It stays the ACLU’s place that in gentle of the hazards of face recognition expertise, lawmakers should halt legislation enforcement entry to it,” Nathan Freed Wessler, Deputy Director of ACLU’s Speech, Privateness, and Expertise Challenge, informed The Register.

The ACLU is at the moment suing the US Division of Justice to power the Feds at hand over extra details about how the FBI and Drug Enforcement Company use the expertise. Inner information recently revealed within the ongoing courtroom proceedings present that the FBI and Protection Division are creating facial recognition software program that may very well be used to determine folks from drone and street-camera video footage.

“The paperwork present the federal government opening a Pandora’s field on a terrifying technical functionality, which might allow pervasive monitoring of anybody or everybody in a method by no means earlier than attainable in a free society,” Freed Wessler stated. “Lawmakers want to shut the door on authorities abuse of this expertise now, earlier than it’s too late.” ®