{"id":3791,"date":"2021-05-18T18:32:04","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T18:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2021\/05\/18\/king-county-facial-recognition\/"},"modified":"2021-05-18T18:32:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T18:32:04","slug":"king-county-facial-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2021\/05\/18\/king-county-facial-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s time for King County to ban governmental use of facial recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The King County Council Committee of the Whole is considering on ordinance 2021-0091, banning governmental use of facial recognition \u2013 including by law enforcement. \u00a0 <\/p>\n

Update, June 2: King County Council passed the ordinance unanimously, 9-0! Thanks to all the activists and researchers who have laid the groundwork for this over the years, all the King County residents who got involved, and to the King Council for the courageous vote!<\/em><\/p>\n

As Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Jennifer Lee of ACLU of Washington say in King County government must turn its back on facial recognition technology<\/a><\/p>\n

The potential dangers inherent in government use of this technology are immense and far outweigh any potential benefit. Facial recognition technology must be banned, not only because it fuels discriminatory surveillance, but also because it jeopardizes everyone\u2019s privacy and civil liberties. With this technology, government agencies can track individuals\u2019 movements and contacts without their knowledge or consent, chilling free speech and free association, undermining press freedom and threatening the free exercise of religion. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Opposition to facial recognition often starts by focusing on the biases and inaccuracies in today’s software. \u00a0 It’s very easy to see the injustice when Black men like \u00a0Robert Julian-Borchak Williams<\/a>, Nijeer Parks<\/a>, and Michael Oliver<\/a> are arrested for crimes they didn’t commit based on false matches by facial recognition software. \u00a0But as I said in my public comments<\/a> at the May 5 Committee of the Whole meeting<\/p>\n

[T]he issues with facial recognition go far beyond today\u2019s bias and accuracy problems<\/strong>. \u00a0 As Timnit Gebru of the Gender Shades project points out in A Case for Banning Facial Recognition<\/a>, even completely accurate facial recognition can still be used in ways that are \u201cdetrimental to certain groups of people.\u201d \u00a0Evan Selinger and Woodrow Herzog suggest accurate facial recognition might be even more dangerous \u201cbecause those in power will find it irresistible and they\u2019ll want to use it more often<\/a>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Veena Dubal strikes a similar note in San Francisco was right to ban facial recognition<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The concerns that motivated the San Francisco<\/a> ban are rooted not just in the potential inaccuracy of facial recognition technology, but in a long national history of politicized and racially-biased state surveillance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s growing momentum for banning facial recognition. \u00a0At least 20 cities – including Boston, New Orleans, and Portland have joined San Francisco in banning it. Vermont banned law enforcement use of facial recogntion last fall, and last month Virgina also banned local law enforcement use. \u00a0And just today, Amazon announced an indefinite extension the moratorium on selling their Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Public comments in the King County Council discussions so far have been really outstanding. \u00a0 Of course, with only two minutes for comments, there’s a lot that hasn’t been discussed in any detail yet. \u00a0One area worth highlighting is the implications of facial recognition on transgender, non-binary, and gender-variant people. \u00a0 Os Keyes’ 2019 Washington state legislature testiminony<\/a> is a good starting point here. \u00a0An excerpt:<\/p>\n

This technology is deeply threatening to trans existences, particularly the existences of trans people of colour. This is for a couple of reasons. The first is simply that the technology is often biased. It is less accurate with trans people; it is less accurate with people of colour. And so when you take it and deploy it, it is more likely to flag trans people as incongruent, unexpected; to falsely identify us as matches, or highlight us for attention.<\/p>\n

If this happens \u2013 if someone is flagged, whether due to dataset bias or a simple error, and reported up to an operator \u2013 trans people are also more likely to face unpleasant and often violent outcomes. Because we are incongruent, because we are often unexpected, there is a long history of government entities, be it the police or the housing administration, discriminating against us. <\/p>\n

The National Transgender Survey, in their 2015 report on Washington State, found that 60% of trans people who had interacted with the police experienced mistreatment. And this is without algorithms prompting the police to interact with us. 33% of us experienced discrimination in public accommodations \u2013 even without a facial recognition system prompting the administrative official weighing up our housing, healthcare or benefits to give us a second look. \u00a0These numbers are far worse for trans people of colour, particularly trans women of colour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, that’s just one of the many problems with facial recognition technology. Ban Government use of Facial Recognition in King County<\/a> (an open letter to King County Council signed by dozens of civil rights, civil liberties, racial equity, immigrant rights, workers rights, and progressive and libertarian organizations) and Malkia Cyril’s Defund Facial Recognition Before It’s Too Late<\/a> have more details. \u00a0<\/p>\n

So if you live or work in King County, please contact the Council and ask them to ban governmental use of facial recognition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Image credit: originally from <\/em>San Francisco passes city government ban on facial recognition tech<\/em><\/a> on TechCrunch<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The King County Council Committee of the Whole is considering on ordinance 2021-0091, banning governmental use of facial recognition \u2013 including by law enforcement. \u00a0 Update, June 2: King County Council passed the ordinance unanimously, 9-0! Thanks to all the activists and researchers who have laid the groundwork for this over the years, all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}