SF Could Ban Facial Recognition Software — Opinion Is Divided Over Whether That’s Good

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Trisha Thadani
Photo: A man passes by a security camera on McAllister Street in San Francisco. (Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle)

San Francisco may become the first city in the country to ban municipal use of facial recognition software — a move that privacy advocates applaud but others say will outlaw a useful crime-solving tool.

The Board of Supervisors will vote Tuesday on a proposal by Supervisor Aaron Peskin that would bar city departments from using the technology, except at federally regulated facilities such as the airport and port. Departments would also have to disclose all the surveillance technology they currently use and get board approval for any new technology that collects, retains or processes a person’s data.

“Hopefully, this catalyzes a conversation both nationally and internationally,” Peskin said. “We don’t even know what technology we have that is being used for surveillance.”

The point of the ban, Peskin said, is to keep law enforcement from a burgeoning technology that has been blamed for inaccuracies — particularly when it comes to identifying minorities — and is largely unregulated in the United States. While several other cities and states have considered similar interventions, San Francisco would be the first city to ban itself from using facial recognition technology.

The legislation has four co-sponsors: Supervisors Norman Yee, Shamann Walton, Hillary Ronen and Matt Haney. It needs six votes to pass, and some supervisors on Monday were still undecided on how they were going to vote.

Peskin said it should be obvious.

“Even if the technology is perfect, this is a genie we as a society should want to put back in the bottle, because this is the kind of technology that will inadvertently be used to make every city and state and every country a police state,” Peskin said.

Remembering the Leslie Salt Mountain: Bay Area’s odd, glistening landmark
San Francisco law enforcement agencies — such as the Police Department and District Attorney’s Office — say they do not use facial recognition software.

The Police Department said in a statement that it “strives to be transparent and understands the need for transparency in the use of emerging technologies,” but did not specifically say whether it supported the ordinance.

The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

Facial recognition is a pricey, powerful and controversial new technology that is becoming increasingly common. Apple uses it to unlock iPhones, Facebook uses it to tag people in photos and some police departments use it to identify suspects. Officers with access to the technology can use it to review images of people’s faces — from Facebook pictures to grainy surveillance footage — and compare them with photos in government databases, like mugshots and driver’s license photos.

Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said “surveillance without oversight makes us less safe and less free.”

“If left unchecked, these systems enable digital profiling, stifle the speech of activists and increase the chances that people, especially low-income residents and people of color, will be entangled with the police and put in life-threatening situations,” Cagle said in a statement.

There are a number of high-profile studies that question the technology’s accuracy. One study by the ACLU in 2018 found that Amazon’s face surveillance technology incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress — disproportionately people of color — with people who have been arrested for a crime.

San Francisco is not the only city seriously considering a moratorium on facial recognition. The Oakland City Council may vote on a similar measure this year, while officials in Somerville, Mass., also recently started discussing a similar ban.

But Daniel Castro, director of the Center for Data Innovation at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said an outright ban on facial recognition goes way too far. If used correctly, he said police departments could use it to increase the accuracy and timeliness of identifying suspects.

“To say we’re just going to have an across-the-board ban on something that has some beneficial uses is very misguided and hurts the citizens and the police from using it in beneficial ways,” he said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-could-ban-facial-recognition-software