Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project at New York’s Urban Justice Centre, which is supporting Amnesty’s Ban the Scan campaign, said: “Facial recognition is biased, broken, and antithetical to democracy.
“For years, the [New York police department] has used facial recognition to track tens of thousands of New Yorkers, putting New Yorkers of colour at risk of false arrest and police violence. Banning facial recognition won’t just protect civil rights: it’s a matter of life and death.”
In tests for racial bias, facial recognition technology has repeatedly come up short.
In 2016, a team at Georgetown University analysed more than 10,000 pages of documents on the use of the technology by US police departments. It found that the departments were applying the technology to databases that were “disproportionately African American”, even while using software that was particularly bad at recognising black faces.
Ban dangerous facial recognition technology that amplifies racist policing
January 25, 2021
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Amnesty International today launches a global campaign to ban the use of facial recognition systems, a form of mass surveillance that amplifies racist policing and threatens the right to protest.
The
Ban the Scan campaign kicks off with New York City and will then expand to focus on the use of facial recognition in other parts of the world in 2021. Facial recognition systems are a form of mass surveillance that violate the right to privacy and threaten the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression.
The technology exacerbates systemic racism as it could disproportionately impact people of color, who are already subject to discrimination and violations of their human rights by law enforcement officials. Black people are also most at risk of being misidentified by facial recognition systems.
Überwachung: Technologie für Gesichtserkennung begünstigt Rassismus bei der Polizeiarbeit — amnesty ch amnesty.ch - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from amnesty.ch Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
25 January 2021 17:37 GMT
Minneapolis is considering a ban on most uses of facial recognition technology by its police and other municipal departments.
A proposal, which has been quietly discussed for months among a coalition of progressive groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, was signed off on without discussion by a City Council committee Thursday. The matter will next be taken up at a public comment session on Feb. 10 before going to the full council for a final vote on Feb. 12.
If successful, the motion could signal a wave of reforms over the use of military and surveillance equipment following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.