Portland Oregon Considering Facial Recognition Technology Ban

By Michael Maharrey

Portland is the latest city to consider a ban on facial recognition technology. The movement to prohibit the use facial recognition at the state and local level could hinder the operation of a growing national facial recognition network.

The Portland City Council was briefed on a proposal to ban facial recognition during a work session on Tuesday. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is drafting the plan at the request of Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. The law would reportedly prohibit both government and private use of facial recognition technology in the city, making it potentially the most far-reaching ban in the U.S.

“These are matters of privacy and consent and civil rights,” Hardesty said. “The technology is currently extremely biased against people of color and women. Even if these problems are improved – automated surveillance and the collection of biometric data is unacceptable. We need to take a strong stand that the surveillance state is not welcome in the city of Portland.”

There is a growing movement to limit or ban the use of facial recognition technology and the local and state level. San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville, Mass. have all prohibited government use of facial recognition technology. The California governor has a bill on his desk that would implement a 3-year ban on the use of the tech in conjunction with police body-worn cameras. The New York Assembly is considering a bill to ban facial recognition in schools. And a bill introduced in the Michigan legislature would place a total statewide ban on police use of facial recognition.

IMPACT ON FEDERAL PROGRAMS

State and local facial recognition programs feed into a broader nationwide surveillance network.

A recent report revealed that the federal government has turned state drivers’ license photos into a giant facial recognition database, putting virtually every driver in America in a perpetual electronic police lineup. The revelations generated widespread outrage, but this story isn’t new. The federal government has been developing a massive, nationwide facial recognition system for years.

The FBI rolled out a nationwide facial-recognition program in the fall of 2014, with the goal of building a giant biometric database with pictures provided by the states and corporate friends.

In 2016, the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law released “The Perpetual Lineup,” a massive report on law enforcement use of facial recognition technology in the U.S. You can read the complete report at perpetuallineup.org. The organization conducted a year-long investigation and collected more than 15,000 pages of documents through more than 100 public records requests. The report paints a disturbing picture of intense cooperation between the federal government, and state and local law enforcement to develop a massive facial recognition database.

“Face recognition is a powerful technology that requires strict oversight. But those controls, by and large, don’t exist today,” report co-author Clare Garvie said. “With only a few exceptions, there are no laws governing police use of the technology, no standards ensuring its accuracy, and no systems checking for bias. It’s a wild west.”

With facial recognition technology, police and other government officials have the capability to track individuals in real-time. These systems allow law enforcement agents to use video cameras and continually scan everybody who walks by. According to the report, several major police departments have expressed an interest in this type of real-time tracking. Documents revealed agencies in at least five major cities, including Los Angeles, either claimed to run real-time face recognition off of street cameras, bought technology with the capability, or expressed written interest in buying it.

In all likelihood, the federal government heavily involves itself in helping state and local agencies obtain this technology. The feds provide grant money to local law enforcement agencies for a vast array of surveillance gear, including ALPRs, stingray devices and drones. The federal government essentially encourages and funds a giant nationwide surveillance net and then taps into the information via fusion centers and the Information Sharing Environment (ISE).

Fusion centers were sold as a tool to combat terrorism, but that is not how they are being used. The ACLU pointed to a bipartisan congressional report to demonstrate the true nature of government fusion centers: “They haven’t contributed anything meaningful to counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they have largely served as police surveillance and information sharing nodes for law enforcement efforts targeting the frequent subjects of police attention: Black and brown people, immigrants, dissidents, and the poor.”

Fusion centers operate within the broader ISE. According to its website, the ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigators…have mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.” In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant. Known ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence which oversees 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. ISE utilizes these partnerships to collect and share data on the millions of unwitting people they track.

In a nutshell, without state and local cooperation, the feds have a much more difficult time gathering information. Local facial recognition bans eliminate one avenue for gathering data. Simply put, data that doesn’t exist cannot be entered into federal databases.

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