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50 Advocacy Orgs Urge Justice Department to Investigate Police Use of Face Recognition
*** MEDIA CALL TODAY AT NOON ET *** Coalition Letter and Report Highlight Impact on Communities of Color
WASHINGTON
Fifty national civil rights, civil liberties, faith, and privacy organizations sent a letter today to the Justice Department urging it to investigate the increasing use and impact of face recognition by police.
The letter, sent in partnership with the ACLU and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, comes amid mounting evidence that the technology is violating the rights of millions of Americans and having a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
Also today, Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology released a report finding that police departments across the country are frequently using face recognition technologies to identify and track individuals -- whether crossing the street, captured on surveillance cameras, or attending protests. The report highlights that existing deficiencies are likely to have a disparate impact on African-Americans.
"We need to stop the widespread use of face recognition technology by police until meaningful safeguards are in place," said Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU legislative counsel. "Half of all adults in the country are in government face recognition databases, yet the vast majority of law enforcement agencies using this technology lack clear policies, audits to ensure accuracy, and transparency."
Today's letter, sent to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, was signed by 50 diverse organizations. The letter explains how federal, state and local police forces use driver license photos to identify suspects --without warrants, accuracy tests, or audits.
"This technology supercharges the racial bias that already exists in policing," said Sakira Cook, counsel with The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "For the good of the nation, we can't afford to let these inherently biased systems operate without any safeguards."
*** DIAL-IN INFORMATION FOR NOON ET MEDIA CALL:
Toll-free line: 877-876-9177 or 785-424-1666, Conference ID: Georgetown ***
Today's ACLU and Leadership Conference coalition letter is here:
https://www.aclu.org/letter/coalition-letter-department-justice-civil-rights-division-calling-investigation-disparate
The Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology report is here:
https://www.perpetuallineup.org/
This statement is online here:
https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-urges-justice-department-investigate-police-use-face-recognition
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
UN Program's 2025 Outlook Warns 343 Million Acutely Food Insecure
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil," said WFP executive director Cindy McCain. "Yet funding is failing to keep pace."
Nov 22, 2024
The World Food Program offered a stark warning for the coming year Friday in its assessment of the escalating global hunger crisis: Due to climate catastrophe and violent conflicts around the world, without adequate funding, "2025 will be a year of unrelenting crises" that drive more people into food insecurity and starvation.
In the WFP 2025 Global Outlook, the agency emphasized that protecting more than 100 million people from devastating hunger in the coming year would require a relatively small investment—$16.9 billion, "roughly what the world spends on coffee in just two weeks."
That amount is a fraction of what the world's wealthiest countries—particularly the United States—put toward military spending in a year.
In total, the WFP found that 343 million people in 74 countries are acutely food insecure—a 10% increase from last year.
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil. Yet funding is failing to keep pace," said Cindy McCain, WFP executive director.
With $16.9 billion, the WFP said it could assist 123 million people who are most vulnerable to extreme hunger.
Among those are 1.9 million people who "are on the brink of famine," including those in Gaza, where access to food has been decimated in the last 13 months by Israel's near-total humanitarian aid blockade, repeated forced displacements, and U.S.-backed bombardment of the enclave. Many people in Gaza are now eating just one meal per day, and the United Nations this week warned of a "stark increase" in the number of households facing severe hunger in the southern and central parts of the territory.
More than 90% of people in Gaza are now "acutely food insecure," with 16% living in "catastrophic conditions," according to the United Nations.
"We urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
People in Haiti and the sub-Saharan African countries of Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan were also identified as being most at risk for extreme hunger, with the region called "ground zero" for the humanitarian crisis.
Over 170 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are "acutely" food insecure, said the WFP. The region "accounts for 50% of WFP's projected funding needs in 2025," driven by climate extremes as well as violent conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Sahel region.
The U.N. Famine Review Committee in August declared that famine had taken hold in a camp where hundreds of thousands of people live in North Darfur, Sudan, after being forcibly displaced by the civil war there.
The U.N. also reported on Thursday that 25.6 million people in the DRC—or 1 in 4—now suffer from "crisis or worse" levels of hunger, driven partially by fighting between armed groups.
"In such a fragile context, the cost of inaction is truly unthinkable," said Peter Musoko, WFP country director and representative for DRC. "Together, we need to work with the government and the humanitarian community to increase resources for this neglected crisis."
Across Asia and the Pacific, WFP said the hunger crisis facing 88 million people is caused largely by "increasingly frequent climate disasters."
In Afghanistan, approximately 12.4 million people faced acute food insecurity last month, linked to the "devastation caused by heavy rainfall and flooding."
The severe impact of Typhoon Yagi in Myanmar led to "even more displacement" and food insecurity, compounding the effects of an escalating civil war, and nearly 6 million people in eastern Bangladesh were also affected by severe flooding this year.
"At WFP, we are dedicated to achieving a world without hunger," said McCain. "But to get there, we urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
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Critics Call COP29 Climate Finance Draft 'Slap in the Face' by Rich Nations
"This is a shameful failure of leadership," said one Oxfam campaigner. "There is only one option for those grappling with the harshest impacts of climate collapse: trillions, not billions, in public and grants-based finance."
Nov 22, 2024
With the United Nations' annual climate summit scheduled to end Friday in Baku, Azerbaijan, green groups denounced the latest draft finance deal, which would direct the Global North to provide just $250 billion per year to help developing countries with emission cuts and adaptation—far below the $1.3 trillion campaigners demanded.
Although the figure represented progress from Thursday, when there was a placeholder "X" for the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance, Oil Change International global public finance manager Laurie van der Burg still stressed that "this text is an absolute embarrassment. It's the equivalent of governments handing the keys to the firetruck to the arsonists."
There is a broader goal to raise $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance, but that would include funding from private sources.
"The vague $1.3 trillion investment target is not to be relied on and the $250 billion goal is not debt-free. Previous suggestions to end fossil fuel handouts and make polluters pay have all been axed," Van der Burg noted. "This amounts to a cop-out for polluters and allows rich countries to dodge their responsibilities by relying on the private sector and even developing countries to cover the bill, creating a debt trap for countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis."
She was far from alone in calling out developed nations, which previously failed to deliver on a 2009 pledge of $100 billion annually for poorer countries impacted by the climate emergency by 2020.
"With a paltry climate finance offer of $250 billion annually, and a deadline to deliver as late as 2035, richer nations including E.U. countries and the United States are dangerously close to betraying the Paris agreement," Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said from Baku.
Parties to the 2015 Paris agreement hope to keep global temperature rise this century "well below" 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels, with a target of 1.5°C. However, a U.N. analysis revealed last month that the world is currently on track for 2.6-3.1°C of warming by 2100.
"The central demand coming into COP29 was for a strong, science-aligned climate finance commitment, which this appalling text utterly fails to provide" Cleetus highlighted. "Wealthier nations seem content to shamefully renege on their responsibility and cave in to fossil fuel interests while unjustly foisting the costs of deadly climate extremes on countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis."
Jess Beagley, policy lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, a consortium of over 200 health professional and civil society groups, warned that "if COP29 agrees on the text shown to us today, it would sign a death sentence for millions."
The alliance's executive director, Jeni Miller, pointed out that "many of the countries most impacted by climate change are already paying more to service their international loans than the combined budgets for their health systems and education, with devastating impacts on people's health and well-being."
"It is unconscionable that wealthy countries are proposing a climate finance deal that could worsen the debt burden of countries facing the brunt of a climate crisis they did not cause," Miller asserted. "As people around the world experience firsthand the devastating impacts of heat, storms, floods, and droughts, the failure of developed countries to step up to their responsibilities is completely unacceptable, not to mention profoundly shortsighted."
Oxfam International's climate justice lead, Safa' Al Jayoussi, took aim at the summit's host, saying: "This is a shameful failure of leadership. The COP29 Presidency's top-down 'take-it-or-leave-it' approach has sidelined progressive voices. All while rich countries boycott climate justice by refusing to pay up and putting only false solutions on the table."
"No deal would be better than a bad deal, but let's be clear—there is only one option for those grappling with the harshest impacts of climate collapse: trillions, not billions, in public and grants-based finance," Al Jayoussi added.
Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said that "our expectations were low, but this is a slap in the face. No developing country will fall for this. What trick is the presidency trying to pull? They've already disappointed everyone, but they have now angered and offended the developing world."
"The figure of $250 billion is about 20% of what developing countries have asked for. Are we really settling for a fifth of the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis?" he continued. "It seems that building an ambitious climate finance outcome in Baku is not the ballgame this presidency is playing."
The U.N. climate summits often run into overtime, but there are concerns that COP29 talks could collapse entirely, given that there must be unanimous support for final deals. There are also fears that rich countries may fail to deliver on any pledge—again—especially with the return of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who ditched the Paris agreement during his first term.
"The Global North must stop playing poker with people's lives and pay their overdue debt," declared Namrata Chowdhary, chief of public engagement at 350.org, one of the groups calling for an overhaul of the COP process. "We need real leadership—from wealthy nations and the presidency—to land this deal. If they can't deliver, they must step aside, because we will not accept a bad deal that fails to meet the moment."
"As the world watches what should be the final day of this year's climate talks, the agreement we came here for remains elusive. This new climate finance goal is three years in the making, and the global majority remains leaps and bounds ahead of the governments who are continuing to stall and let progress slip away in the name of profits," Chowdhary concluded. "But we will not be silenced. At COP29, we hold the line in our demand for more climate finance, not this bare minimum offer."
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As Biden and Trump Teams Attack ICC, Tlaib Says Netanyahu 'Must Be Arrested'
"Today's historic arrest warrants cannot bring back the dead and displaced," said U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, "but they are a major step towards holding war criminals accountable."
Nov 22, 2024
The lone Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress said Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "must be arrested" in compliance with warrants issued by judges on the International Criminal Court, a response that contrasted sharply with that of the Biden administration and allies of President-elect Donald Trump.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), one of Congress' most outspoken opponents of Israel's war on Gaza, said in a statement that the ICC warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were "long overdue" given the gravity of the accusations against them.
The ICC panel that approved the warrants on Thursday said it found "reasonable grounds to believe" Netanyahu and Gallant are guilty of "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare" and the "crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts."
The ICC also approved an arrest warrant for Hamas military leader Muhammad Deif, whom Israel claims to have killed in an airstrike in southern Gaza last month.
Tlaib said Thursday that the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant represent a signal that "the days of the Israeli apartheid government operating with impunity are ending" and condemned the Biden administration's continued military and diplomatic support for Israel's catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip, where most of the population is now displaced and at growing risk of starvation and disease.
The Democratic congresswoman said the "historic arrest warrants cannot bring back the dead and displaced, but they are a major step towards holding war criminals accountable."
"If the world does not uphold international law, we will descend into further barbarism."
Tlaib was among a number of progressive U.S. lawmakers who backed the ICC's decision as the Biden White House, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and likely members of the incoming Trump administration lashed out at the court and threatened retaliation—underscoring the country's outlier status as its allies affirmed their support for the ICC and said they would abide by its warrants.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Thursday that the ICC's decision represents "an important step to hold these war criminals accountable for their grave crimes against humanity and war crimes."
"I express my sincere admiration for the victims of the atrocities in Israel on October 7th and the victims of the war crimes that have and are currently taking place in Gaza who provided their testimony to the prosecutor's office to make these arrest warrants possible," said Omar. "Just as I have said for months, the ICC must continue to work independently without interference."
Omar denounced bipartisan calls for sanctions against the ICC as "shameful" and praised the court's staff for pushing to "uphold human rights, accountability, and the rule of law."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also voiced agreement with the ICC's decision to issue the warrants, saying late Thursday that the court's charges against Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif "are well-founded."
The ICC formally issued the warrants just hours after Sanders forced a historic U.S. Senate vote late Wednesday in an effort to block American arms sales to Israel. The Sanders-led effort failed as an overwhelming majority of senators from both parties voted against halting the weapons transfers.
In his statement Thursday, Sanders said that "Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif have all launched indiscriminate attacks against civilians, and all three have caused unimaginable suffering within the civilian population."
"If the world does not uphold international law," the senator warned, "we will descend into further barbarism."
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