San Francisco could be the first US city to ban facial recognition technology

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A prohibition proposal is part of a broader oversight order that the city's supervisory board should approve on Tuesday. If passed – the majority of the council's 11 supervisors expressed support – San Francisco will become the first US city to ban the use of this technology by police and other ministries. The order could also encourage other local governments to take similar action.
Facial recognition systems are being used more and more everywhere, from police departments to rock concerts to homes, shops and schools. They are designed to identify specific people from live video streams, recorded video clips, or photos, often comparing their features to a set of faces (such as snapshots).

The rule proposed by San Francisco prohibits the use of facial recognition technology by the 53 departments of the city, including the San Francisco Police Department, which does not use this technology to date, but It has tested between 2013 and 2017. However, the ordinance excludes exception for federally controlled facilities at the San Francisco International Airport and the San Francisco Harbor. The ordinance does not prevent companies or residents from using facial recognition technology or surveillance in general, as with their own security cameras. And that does nothing to prevent the police from using, for example, images taken with the camera from a person's nest to help him in a criminal case.

"We all support a good police, but none of us wants to live in a police state," Aaron Peskin, a supervisor in San Francisco, told CNN Business, who introduced the bill earlier this year. , before the vote.

The ordinance adds even more fuel to the fire that burns around the facial recognition technology. While the technology is gaining popularity, it is under scrutiny because of growing concerns about its deployment, its accuracy, and even the origin of the faces used to drive the systems.

In San Francisco, Peskin fears that the technology is "so fundamentally invasive" that it should not be used.

"I think San Francisco has the responsibility to talk about the problems that affect the whole world and happen in our garden," he said.

The beginnings of facial recognition laws

Facial recognition has improved dramatically in recent years due to the popularity of a powerful form of machine learning called deep learning. In a typical system, the facial features are analyzed and compared to the tagged faces of a database.

Yet Amnesty International researchers and civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union are particularly concerned about the accuracy and bias of facial recognition systems. It is feared that they are not as effective at correctly recognizing people of color and women. One of the reasons for this problem is that the datasets used to train the software can be disproportionately male and white.

A screen featuring a face recognition system for law enforcement at the NVIDIA GPU technology conference.

The ACLU is one of many civil rights groups that support the ordinance. Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties lawyer with the ACLU in northern California, said the many problems posed by face recognition systems meant that the legislation proposed by the city would prevent members of the community to harm. He expects that, if it is adopted, the other cities do the same.

"We should be able to live our lives without any of our movements being monitored and monitored by the government," he told CNN Business.

At present, no federal law indicates how to use artificial intelligence technology in general, or facial recognition systems in particular, although a Senate bill introduced in March would require companies to obtain consumer consent before collecting and sharing identification data.
Some states and local governments have made their own efforts: Illinois, for example, has a law that requires companies to obtain the consent of their customers before collecting biometric information. The California Senate is currently studying a bill that would ban state police from using biometric technology – such as facial recognition – with body camera images.

In the Bay Area alone, Berkeley, Oakland, Palo Alto and Santa Clara County (of which Palo Alto is a part) have adopted their own laws regarding surveillance technology. Oakland also plans to ban the use of facial recognition technology.

How surveillance could be more difficult in San Francisco

Under the proposed San Francisco law, any city department wishing to use a technology or surveillance services (for example, the police department that wishes to purchase new license plate readers, for example) must first obtain the approval of the supervisory board. This process would include the submission of information about the technology and its use, and its presentation at a public hearing. With the proposed rule, any municipal service that already uses surveillance technology should tell the board how it is being used.

"The purpose of this order is to make sure that when there are monitoring programs, the community has a voice and a place at the table," Cagle said.

The ordinance also states that the city will have to indicate each year to the supervisory board whether the surveillance equipment and services are used in the manner in which they were approved, and specify in particular which data have been kept, shared or erased.

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In a statement, the San Francisco Police Department said it was "looking forward" to working with the city's supervisors, the ACLU, and others, to develop laws that would address privacy concerns related to technology, "while balancing the growing security concerns of our growing international society."

"In accordance with the legislation, we are in the process of verifying our technologies and related policies," the statement said.

Voice opposition

Some locals were violently opposed to the monitoring order, including several groups of residents. Frank Noto, president of Stop Crime SF, a group focused on crime prevention, said his organization recognized the privacy and civil liberties concerns that may have motivated the introduction of crime prevention. Ordinance, but considered it as imperfect legislation largely because it requires the approval of the police department. of the city before you can get surveillance technology.

And while Stop Crime SF recognizes the flaws of existing facial recognition technology, it is also concerned to ban its use altogether. Noto suggested a moratorium on its use – say for two years – could be a better option.

"The idea of ​​forbidding it forever does not make sense to us," he said.

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