We’ll be able to see the federal regulations on facial recognition next week

On May 10, 40 groups of defenders sent an open letter asking for a permanent ban About US police using Amazon’s face recognition software, Rekognition. The letter was addressed to Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy, ​​the company’s upcoming CEOs, and arrived a few weeks earlier Amazon’s year-round moratorium it was expired in law enforcement sales.

The letter contrasted the support of the voices of Bezos and Jassy to Black Lives Matter campaigners after George Floyd was killed during racial justice protests last summer. other Amazon products have been used by law enforcement to identify protesters.

May 17, Amazon he announced it would extend the moratorium indefinitely, introducing self-regulated purgatory with competitors IBM and Microsoft. The move is a gesture to recognize the political power of groups struggling to stop technology and to start creating new frameworks for the legislative struggle. Many believe that important federal legislation will come soon.

“People are sold out”

It’s been the last year essential for facial recognition, including revelations about technology false arrests, and has put bans on this nearly two dozen cities and seven states Across the US. But the push for facial recognition has been changing for a long time.

In 2018, it was published by AI researchers an examination Comparing the accuracy of commercial software for recognizing the faces of IBM, Microsoft, and Face ++. Their work found significant gaps in the way technology identifies lighter-skinned men and dark-skinned women; IBM’s system scored the worst on both teams with an error rate of 34.4%.

Also in 2018, The ACLU tested Amazon’s Recognition and found that he had misidentified 28 members of Congress as criminals, focused on disproportionately colored people. Organization he wrote his open letter to Amazon, calling on the government to ban the use of technology by the government, As did the Black Caucus of Congress“But Amazon didn’t change.”

In a race against police brutality in the summer of last summer, however, Amazon surprised many by announcing that police were suspending the use of Rekognition, even for federal law enforcement officials like ICE. The company’s announcement said it hoped the break would “allow Congress enough time to set the right rules.”

Evan Greer is the director of Fight for the Future, a technology advocacy group that believes in the abolition of face recognition technology and can regulate the growing public support. As this week’s extension of the moratorium shows, “Amazon is responding to this tremendous pressure they’re receiving, not just on face recognition. I really give tremendous credit to the uprisings of nations over racial justice over the past year and a half.”

“Political Reality”

Although there is pressure from major technology providers, the reality is that law enforcement and most government users do not buy software to recognize the face of companies like Amazon. So while defense teams are welcome in moratoriums and bans, they don’t necessarily prevent the use of technology. Meanwhile, Congress will not pass federal legislation to reduce the use of face recognition technology by law enforcement agencies that would regulate the government or smaller suppliers.

Some hope that federal legislation will come soon, however, through the direct action of Congress to recognize the face, through the executive order for the presidency, or as part of bills for upcoming adjustments and police reform.

“In my opinion, the best case scenario is that Congress is going through a moratorium on the use of the use,” says ACLU chief executive Kate Ruane and that the new uses would only be approved after more legislative work.

Several bills that would have dominated access to facial recognition have already been proposed.

• The Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act any federal entity is demanding a ban on the software, as well as withholding federal funding from state and local authorities that do not support their moratorium. It was proposed by four Democratic members of Congress and presented in the Senate last year.
• The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act it would prevent the use of facial knowledge in body cameras. The bill has already been passed in the House and is expected to reach the Senate next week. President Biden has called for the bill to be passed on May 25 before the anniversary of the death of George Floyd.
• The The fourth amendment is not a sale law It is a two-party bill tabled by 18 senators that limits the government from working with technology providers that violate service conditions. In practice, this would largely prevent the government from accessing systems that operate in web scraping, such as Clearview AI.

Mutale Nkonde, CEO of AI for the People, which advocates for non-profit technology racial justice, believes it is likely to see additional federal legislation for next year’s midterm elections.

“I believe the federal legislation that will govern all algorithmic systems, including face recognition, will be introduced,” says Nkonde. “I think that’s a political reality.”

According to Nkond, the concept of impact assessments that assess technological systems based on civil rights is growing in policy circles on both sides of the corridor.