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facial recognition and biometric technology moratorium act
After Black Pregnant Woman's False Arrest, Markey Renews Call for Federal Facial Recognition Ban
"We need to pass my bill to prohibit the use of biometric technologies by federal entities and law enforcement so that people like Porcha aren't wrongly accused."
Aug 07, 2023
In response to reporting about an innocent Black woman misidentified as a criminal suspect by facial recognition software and arrested in Michigan, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey on Monday demanded federal legislation he first proposed years ago.
The New York Times detailed Sunday that Porcha Woodruff was eight months pregnant and getting her daughters ready for school in February when members of the Detroit Police Department (DPD) arrested her for alleged robbery and carjacking. The 32-year-old was held at the Detroit Detention Center for 11 hours, after which she required hospital treatment for dehydration. The case against her was dismissed, but on Thursday she filed suit against the city and Detective Officer LaShauntia Oliver in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
"In the warrant affidavit, Detective Oliver omitted the fact that [Woodruff's] facial recognition was eight years old, and [Woodruff's] recent driver's license photo was available," the suit states, according to The Detroit News. "[Oliver] deliberately omitted facts because the magistrate would have possibly denied the warrant. The omitted facts were material in finding probable cause to obtain a warrant affidavit for [Woodruff's] arrest."
Responding on social media, Markey (D-Mass.) said: "Unacceptable. Facial recognition frequently misidentifies vulnerable and marginalized people. We need to pass my bill to prohibit the use of biometric technologies by federal entities and law enforcement so that people like Porcha aren't wrongly accused."
Markey and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) along with Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) first introduced the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act in 2020. In March, they reintroduced the bill with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) as well as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
"The year is 2023, but we are living through 1984. The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing," Markey said at the time, referencing George Orwell's dystopian novel. "Biometric data collection poses serious risks of privacy invasion and discrimination, and Americans know they should not have to forgo personal privacy for safety. As we work to make our country more equitable, we cannot ignore the technologies that stand in the way of progress and perpetuate injustice."
According to his office, the bill would:
- Place a prohibition on the use of facial recognition technology by federal entities, which can only be lifted with an act of Congress;
- Place a prohibition on the use of other biometric technologies, including voice recognition, gate recognition, and recognition of other immutable physical characteristics, by federal entities, which can only be lifted with an act of Congress;
- Condition federal grant funding to state and local entities, including law enforcement, on those entities enacting their own moratoria on the use of facial recognition and biometric technology;
- Prohibit the use of federal dollars for biometric surveillance systems;
- Prohibit the use of information collected via biometric technology in violation of the act in any judicial proceedings;
- Provide a private right of action for individuals whose biometric data is used in violation of the act and allow for enforcement by state attorneys general; and
- Allow states and localities to enact their own laws regarding the use of facial recognition and biometric technologies.
Experts and rights advocates have long warned about the inaccuracy and biases of facial recognition technology and raised the alarm about its use by all levels of law enforcement.
While some states and municipalities have passed restrictions on such technology, there are no federal regulations—though experiences like that of Woodruff have fueled demands for swift and sweeping action by the divided Congress.
According to the Times:
The ordeal started with an automated facial recognition search, according to an investigator's report from the Detroit Police Department. Ms. Woodruff is the sixth person to report being falsely accused of a crime as a result of facial recognition technology used by police to match an unknown offender's face to a photo in a database. All six people have been Black; Ms. Woodruff is the first woman to report it happening to her.
It is the third case involving the Detroit Police Department, which runs, on average, 125 facial recognition searches a year, almost entirely on Black men, according to weekly reports about the technology's use provided by the police to Detroit's Board of Police Commissioners, a civilian oversight group. Critics of the technology say the cases expose its weaknesses and the dangers posed to innocent people.
In a statement to multiple media outlets, DPD Chief James White said: "I have reviewed the allegations contained in the lawsuit. They are very concerning. We are taking this matter very seriously, but we cannot comment further at this time due to the need for additional investigation. We will provide further information once additional facts are obtained and we have a better understanding of the circumstances."
Another incident involving the city's police landed Robert Williams behind bars in January 2020, after state-owned facial recognition software misidentified the Black Michigander as a shoplifting suspect. He is represented by the national and state ACLU as well as the University of Michigan Law School's Civil Rights Litigation Initiative in an ongoing legal battle.
"It's deeply concerning that the Detroit Police Department knows the devastating consequences of using flawed facial recognition technology as the basis for someone's arrest and continues to rely on it anyway," Phil Mayor, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan, said in a statement Sunday as news outlets shared Woodruff's story.
"As Ms. Woodruff's horrifying experience illustrates, the department's use of this technology must end," Mayor continued. "Furthermore, the DPD continues to hide its abuses of this technology, forcing people whose rights have been violated to expose its wrongdoing case by case. DPD should not be permitted to avoid transparency and hide its own misconduct from public view at the same time it continues to subject Detroiters to dragnet surveillance."
The ACLU was among the groups that endorsed Markey's legislation in March, with senior policy counsel Chad Marlow saying the senator "understands Congress should not be using federal funds to underwrite the use of technologies that threaten our most sacred civil rights and civil liberties" and applauding all of the bill's sponsors for working to safeguard "our freedoms against the prying eyes of unchecked government surveillance."
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ACLU Obtains Docs Detailing FBI, Pentagon Development of Facial Recognition Tech
"The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing," said Sen. Ed Markey, reintroducing a federal ban.
Mar 07, 2023
Thousands of records about U.S. government involvement in the research and development of facial recognition technology—unveiled due to an ACLU lawsuit and first reported on Tuesday by The Washington Post—fueled fresh calls for a federal ban on such tools.
"Americans' ability to navigate our communities without constant tracking and surveillance is being chipped away at an alarming pace," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told the Post. "We cannot stand by as the tentacles of the surveillance state dig deeper into our private lives, treating every one of us like suspects in an unbridled investigation that undermines our rights and freedom."
While some cities and states have taken action, there is currently no federal law restricting the use of facial recognition tools. However, Markey pledged to reintroduce his proposed ban on government use of the technology—which he did, alongside Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and other Democrats, within hours of the reporting.
"As we work to make our country more equitable, we cannot ignore the technologies that stand in the way of progress and perpetuate injustice."
"The year is 2023, but we are living through 1984. The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing," declared Markey, reintroducing the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which is backed by various groups including the ACLU.
"Biometric data collection poses serious risks of privacy invasion and discrimination, and Americans know they should not have to forgo personal privacy for safety," the senator said. "As we work to make our country more equitable, we cannot ignore the technologies that stand in the way of progress and perpetuate injustice."
Despite concerns about accuracy and bias—bolstered by examples of misidentified Black men being arrested for crimes they did not commit—the U.S. Defense Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were more closely involved in work on facial recognition software to identify people from drone and street camera footage than was previously known, according to the documents revealed as a result of the ACLU's public records lawsuit filed in late 2019.
\u201cThe FBI and the Department of Defense have been actively researching and developing facial recognition software for years.\n\nThe ultimate goal is to track large numbers of people using footage from any public surveillance camera \u2014 no matter how grainy, far, or obscured we are.\u201d— ACLU (@ACLU) 1678202897
The Post reported that documents including internal emails and presentations expose how intimately officials at the FBI—which is part of the Justice Department—and Pentagon "worked with academic researchers to refine artificial intelligence techniques that could help in the identification or tracking of Americans without their awareness or consent."
Many of the records pertain to the Janus program, which was funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) and ultimately folded into a search tool used by multiple federal agencies called Horus. As the newspaper detailed:
Program leaders worked with FBI scientists and some of the nation's leading computer vision experts to design and test software that would quickly and accurately process the "truly unconstrained face imagery" recorded by surveillance cameras in public places, including subway stations and street corners, according to the documents, which the ACLU shared with The Washington Post.
In a 2019 presentation, an IARPA program manager said the goal had been to "dramatically improve" the power and performance of facial recognition systems, with "scaling to support millions of subjects" and the ability to quickly identify faces from partially obstructed angles. One version of the system was trained for "Face ID... at target distances" of more than a half-mile.
To refine the system's capabilities, researchers staged a data-gathering test in 2017, paying dozens of volunteers to simulate real-world scenarios at a Defense Department training facility made to resemble a hospital, a subway station, an outdoor marketplace, and a school, the documents show. The test yielded thousands of surveillance videos and images, some of which were captured by a drone.
"IARPA said in public filings that the Janus program had helped advance 'virtually every aspect of fundamental face recognition research' and led to algorithms that were 'twice as accurate as the most widely used government-off-the-shelf systems,'" the Post noted.
\u201cThe FBI + DOD were actively involved in the R&D of facial recognition software they hoped to use to ID people from street camera + drone footage. \u201cWe\u2019re essentially beta-testing technology on real people with real-world consequences.\u201d https://t.co/ed2FaNZPQi via @drewharwell\u201d— Rachael Myrow (@Rachael Myrow) 1678210234
Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told the newspaper that the tool's use in U.S. mass surveillance would be a "nightmare scenario."
"It could give the government the ability to pervasively track as many people as they want for as long as they want," he said. "There's no good outcome for that in a democratic society."
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