Police seldom disclose use of facial recognition despite false arrests; The Washington Post, October 6, 2024

Douglas MacMillan

, 

David Ovalle

 and 

Aaron Schaffer

, The Washington Post; Police seldom disclose use of facial recognition despite false arrests

"Police departments in 15 states provided The Post with rarely seen records documenting their use of facial recognition in more than 1,000 criminal investigations over the past four years. According to the arrest reports in those cases and interviews with people who were arrested, authorities routinely failed to inform defendants about their use of the software — denying them the opportunity to contest the results of an emerging technology that is prone to error, especially when identifying people of color...

The Post requested records from more than 100 police departments that have publicly acknowledged using facial recognition; only 30 provided arrest records from cases in which they used the software. Most declined to answer questions about their use of the technology. A few said they use it to identify potential leads but never make an arrest based solely on a computer match, so they’re not required to disclose it to the people arrested."

Unmasking AI's Racism And Sexism; NPR, Fresh Air, November 28, 2023

 NPR, Fresh Air; Unmasking AI's Racism And Sexism

"Computer scientist and AI expert Joy Buolamwini warns that facial recognition technology is riddled with the biases of its creators. She is the author of Unmasking AI and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. She coined the term "coded gaze," a cousin to the "white gaze" or "male gaze." She says, "This is ... about who has the power to shape technology and whose preferences and priorities are baked in — as well as also, sometimes, whose prejudices are baked in.""

You can say no to a TSA face scan. But even a senator had trouble.; The Washington Post, July 11, 2023

 Shira Ovide, The Washington Post; You can say no to a TSA face scan. But even a senator had trouble.

"Let’s discuss two topics:

• TSA’s face scanning is supposed to be optional for us. Is it, really?
• What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of the TSA’s use of facial recognition software?"

Ethical issues of facial recognition technology; TechRepublic, August 31, 2022

  Patrick Gray in Artificial Intelligence, TechRepublic; Ethical issues of facial recognition technology

"Facial recognition technology has entered the mass market, with our faces now able to unlock our phones and computers. While the ability to empower machines with the very human ability to identify a person with a quick look at their face is exciting, it’s not without significant ethical concerns.

Suppose your company is considering facial recognition technology. In that case, it’s essential to be aware of these concerns and ready to address them, which may even include abandoning facial recognition altogether.

When assessing these ethical concerns, consider how your customers, employees and the general public would react if they fully knew how you’re using the technology. If that thought is disconcerting, you may be veering into an ethical “danger zone.”"

Facebook pays $550m settlement for breaking Illinois data protection law; The Guardian, January 30, 2020

Alex Hern, The Guardian; Facebook pays $550m settlement for breaking Illinois data protection law

"Facebook has settled a lawsuit over facial recognition technology, agreeing to pay $550m (£419m) over accusations it had broken an Illinois state law regulating the use of biometric details...

It is one of the largest payouts for a privacy breach in US history, a marker of the strength of Illinois’s nation-leading privacy laws. The New York Times, which first reported the settlement, noted that the sum “dwarfed” the $380m penalty the credit bureau Equifax agreed to pay over a much larger customer data breach in 2017."

This App Is a Dangerous Invasion of Your Privacy—and the FBI Uses It; Popular Mechanics, January 22, 2020

Courtney Linder, Popular Mechanics; This App Is a Dangerous Invasion of Your Privacy—and the FBI Uses It

"Even Google Wouldn't Build This

When companies like Google—which has received a ton of flack for taking government contracts to work on artificial intelligence solutions—won't even build an app, you know it's going to cause a stir. Back in 2011, former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said a tool like Clearview AI's app was one of the few pieces of tech that the company wouldn't develop because it could be used "in a very bad way."

Facebook, for its part, developed something pretty similar to what Clearview AI offers, but at least had the foresight not to publicly release it. That application, developed between 2015 and 2016, allowed employees to identify colleagues and friends who had enabled facial recognition by pointing their phone cameras at their faces. Since then, the app has been discontinued.

Meanwhile, Clearview AI is nowhere near finished. Hidden in the app's code, which the New York Times evaluated, is programming language that could pair the app to augmented reality glasses, meaning that in the future, it's possible we could identify every person we see in real time.

Early Pushback

Perhaps the silver lining is that we found out about Clearview AI at all. Its public discovery—and accompanying criticism—have led to well-known organizations coming out as staunchly opposed to this kind of tech.

Fight for the Future tweeted that "an outright ban" on these AI tools is the only way to fix this privacy issue—not quirky jewelry or sunglasses that can help to protect your identity by confusing surveillance systems."

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It; The New York Times, January 18, 2020

Kashmir Hill, The New York Times; The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

"Even if Clearview doesn’t make its app publicly available, a copycat company might, now that the taboo is broken. Searching someone by face could become as easy as Googling a name. Strangers would be able to listen in on sensitive conversations, take photos of the participants and know personal secrets. Someone walking down the street would be immediately identifiable — and his or her home address would be only a few clicks away. It would herald the end of public anonymity.

Asked about the implications of bringing such a power into the world, Mr. Ton-That seemed taken aback.

“I have to think about that,” he said. “Our belief is that this is the best use of the technology.”"

Real-Time Surveillance Will Test the British Tolerance for Cameras; The New York Times, September 15, 2019

Adam Satariano, The New York Times; Real-Time Surveillance Will Test the British Tolerance for Cameras

Facial recognition technology is drawing scrutiny in a country more accustomed to surveillance than any other Western democracy. 

"“Technology is driving forward, and legislation and regulation follows ever so slowly behind,” said Tony Porter, Britain’s surveillance camera commissioner, who oversees compliance with the country’s surveillance camera code of practice. “It would be wrong for me to suggest the balance is right.”

Britain’s experience mirrors debates about the technology in the United States and elsewhere in Europe. Critics say the technology is an intrusion of privacy, akin to constant identification checks of an unsuspecting public, and has questionable accuracy, particularly at identifying people who aren’t white men."

Facial recognition could speed up airport security, but at what risk to privacy?; CBS News, June 16, 2017

CBS News; Facial recognition could speed up airport security, but at what risk to privacy?

"Your face may soon be the only thing you need to board a flight. Some airlines are already testing facial recognition technology with the federal government.

The idea is to ditch boarding passes and increase the certainty of a passenger's identity...

"Implementation of the use of biometrics need to be scrutinized very closely," said Jeramie Scott of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who worries about the use of personal identifiers that cannot change. 

"Increasingly, as we consolidate biometric data into big databases and we use it more and more, those databases will become targets, and the risk of data breach increases greatly," Scott explained. "