First city in the United States looks to ban the use of facial recognition over privacy and human rights concerns

The West coast city of San Francisco looks set to become the first metropolitan area in the US to ban the use of facial recognition technology.

The ban would mean that local agencies, such as the local police force and other city agencies such as transportation would not be able to utilise the technology in any of their systems.

It comes amid growing concern at the privacy implications of the technology. Last year for example FBI agents in Columbus, Ohio forced an Apple iPhone X owner to unlock his device with his face, via the device’s Face ID technology.

The FBI had arrested a suspect whilst he was being investigated for child abuse. The FBI had obtained a search warrant and entered the suspect’s home on 10 August as part of their investigation.

Special agent David Knight reportedly unlocked the suspect’s iPhone by holding up the handset to the suspect’s face, as they did not have his phone passcode.

This allowed the FBI investigator to delve into the contents of the suspect’s device, including his online chats and photos, all of which proved highly incriminating.

Cases like this illustrate growing alarm in some quarters at the growing use of facial recognition. A number of police forces in the US (and the UK) already use the tech, but not San Francisco’s local police force.

So this week San Francisco officials at the city’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted 8 to 1 to ban the purchase and use of facial recognition technology by city personnel, Reuters reported.

The ban also requires city departments to submit surveillance technology policies for public vetting. The ban would become final after a second vote next week by the same officials.

The draft ban can be found online here.

“We have a fundamental duty to safeguard the public from potential abuses,” Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who championed the ban, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Peskin reportedly said the ban was not an anti-technology policy, as it still allows for the continued use of surveillance tools such as security cameras, and local law enforcement can appeal to use certain restricted technology in exceptional circumstances as well.

Peskin said the aim of the ban was was to protect “marginalized groups” that could be harmed by the technology.

It should be noted that the San Fran ban would only apply to local city agencies and not federal agencies such as the FBI.

This would mean that security measures at San Francisco’s airport or other transport hubs would retain the use of facial recognition.

San Francisco officials have stated their concern at the implications of facial recognition for privacy and human rights, as some have alleged it can unfairly pick out certain racial groupings.

And this concerns may not be misplaced. As far back as 2011, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher used Facebook photos to demonstrate how facial-recognition technology could be used to identify people as they walked down the street.

Using off-the-shelf facial-recognition software and students’ photos posted on Facebook, Alessandro Acquisiti, a CMU researcher, showed attendees at the annual Black Hat security conference how he was able to positively identify 30 percent of students walking around the campus.

And facial recognition can also be fooled as well. In 2017 Vietnamese cybersecurity firm said it had tricked the facial recognition feature on the iPhone X using a 3D-printed mask.

Researchers at Bkav created a $150 mask, and they said it took them less than a week to spoof Apple’s Face ID. They also said it was even easier than they expected with only half a face needed to create the fake mask.

Can you protect your privacy online? Take our quiz! </s> San Francisco on Tuesday became the first city in the United States to ban the use of facial-recognition software by city agencies and the police, dealing a swift symbolic blow to a key technology rapidly being deployed by law enforcement nationwide.

The 8-to-1 vote by the city’s Board of Supervisors will forbid public agencies from using the artificial-intelligence software to find the identity of someone based on a video clip or photograph. Privacy and civil rights advocates have worried that the capability could be misused for mass surveillance and possibly lead to more false arrests.

The law will not regulate local businesses, and the technology is still largely unregulated across the United States. But San Francisco’s ban will resonate because of the city’s identity as a friendly backyard for some of the world’s most powerful tech firms, including Google and Facebook, whose engineers have designed systems that can detect and recognize faces for business and consumer use.

“That a community where a lot of the folks are building facial recognition is the first to ban it is pretty telling of the dangers of the technology,” said Jevan Hutson, a University of Washington law student who advocated a facial-recognition moratorium in Washington, the home state of Amazon and Microsoft. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

[Oregon became a testing ground for Amazon’s facial-recognition policing. But what if Rekognition gets it wrong?]

“For too long we’ve had this ‘move fast, break things’ model on the public side with surveillance,” Hutson added. “We’re reclaiming our ability to say no to technologies that deface democracy and our ability to live freely.”

No federal laws govern the use of facial recognition nationwide, and more than 50 state or local police agencies across the country have at some point used facial-recognition systems in attempts to identify criminal suspects or verify identities.

Oakland, Calif., and Somerville, Mass., have introduced legislation for bans similar to San Francisco’s. A bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in March would ban companies, but not governments, from collecting facial-recognition data without consent.

The San Francisco ordinance will also require all new surveillance equipment to be approved by city leaders, who could also seek measures “to verify that mandated civil rights and civil liberties safeguards have been strictly adhered to.”

A second reading of the Stop Secretive Surveillance Ordinance is expected to be approved at an upcoming board meeting, when it will officially become law. Aaron Peskin, the San Francisco supervisor who introduced the bill earlier this year, has voiced concerns that facial-recognition technology could turn the city into a “police state.”

The law could increase the pressure on companies such as Amazon that have sought to sell facial-recognition systems to police agencies, citing their potential benefits in finding missing children or pursuing criminals. Amazon investors will vote next week on a proposal that could block the company from selling its system, Rekognition, to government agencies.

Google has said it won’t offer a general-purpose facial-recognition tool until it works through “important technology and policy questions.” Microsoft has urged Congress to regulate the technology, saying companies should not be left to police themselves because of the technology’s “broad societal ramifications and potential for abuse.”

Members of Congress, civil rights groups and leading artificial intelligence researchers have called on Amazon and other companies to stop developing the technology for law enforcement use. Studies have found that the systems perform less accurately on people of color, raising the risks of misidentification.

But the San Francisco law may not slow the growth of facial-recognition technology in schools, sporting arenas and airports, which have folded them into their gate areas for an additional layer of identify verification and surveillance. The Department of Homeland Security said last month that it wanted 97 percent of all departing air travelers to undergo a facial-recognition scan by 2023. </s> SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco officials on Tuesday voted 8 to 1 to ban the purchase and use of facial recognition technology by city personnel, in a move to regulate tools that local Silicon Valley companies helped develop.

The ordinance, which also would require city departments to submit surveillance technology policies for public vetting, can become final after a second vote next week by the same officials, the city’s Board of Supervisors.

The action puts San Francisco at the forefront of increasing discontent in the United States over facial recognition, which government agencies have used for years and now has become more powerful with the rise of cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies.

“We have a fundamental duty to safeguard the public from potential abuses,” Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who championed the ban, said before the board’s vote.

Peskin said the ordinance was not an anti-technology policy. It allows continued use of surveillance tools like security cameras; the district attorney or sheriff can make an appeal to use certain restricted technology in exceptional circumstances as well.

Rather, Peskin said, the aim is to protect “marginalized groups” that could be harmed by the technology.

For instance, Amazon.com Inc has come under scrutiny since last year for selling an image analysis and ID service to law enforcement. Researchers have said this service struggles to identify the gender of individuals with darker skin, prompting fears of unjust arrests. Amazon has defended its work and said all users must follow the law.

Civil rights groups and companies including Microsoft Corp, which markets a facial recognition service, have called for regulation of the technology in recent months. This has added momentum to the effort in San Francisco and to a parallel ban reportedly in the works in nearby Oakland.

For a draft text of the San Francisco ordinance, see bit.ly/30jkPuJ

While communities at the heart of the technology industry are moving to limit facial recognition, police elsewhere have increased their use, primarily to spot potential suspects in known offender databases after a crime has occurred.

U.S. customs agents are vetting foreign travelers at airports with facial recognition, and other federal agencies use the technology too.

Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, said concerns that the U.S. government would use face identification for mass surveillance, like China has, were overblown. The non-profit includes technology industry representatives on its board.

San Francisco’s “ban on facial recognition will make it frozen in time with outdated technology,” he said. </s> San Francisco Is First U.S. City To Ban Facial Recognition Technology

Police in San Francisco will be banned from using facial recognition, part of sweeping restrictions put on surveillance technology used by the city's agencies.

San Francisco could become the first large city to bar police from using facial recognition software. NPR's Martin Kaste has the story.

MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: This ban wouldn't change anything for San Francisco police right now. They tried a facial recognition system for a time, but sources in the department say they gave up on it because it wasn't much good. But what is significant about this legislation is the way the city has now singled-out facial recognition going forward.

KASTE: That's the legislation's author, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, explaining yesterday why his legislation allows for other kinds of surveillance tech but not facial recognition.

PESKIN: Unlike other technologies, we cannot hide our faces or change what we look like.

KASTE: And Peskin raised the specter of mass surveillance in China, where cameras in the street can now reportedly ID faces in real time. The thing is, that's not how most American police are using facial recognition. So far, it's mostly been used like other forms of biometric evidence - say, fingerprints. It's evidence taken from a crime scene and matched against a database, not surveillance of where everybody goes. Brian van Kleef is a deputy in Washington County, Ore., where the sheriff's office has been very public about its embrace of facial recognition software for solving crimes.

BRIAN VAN KLEEF: It's a needle-in-a-haystack type of thing. We have a needle, or a suspect photo, and we're able to search our haystack of 300,000 previous booking photos and narrow it down to five possible matches.

KASTE: The system compares crime scene images only to booking photos from their jail, and they're not allowed to use it to identify people in real time, say, with a camera pointed at the street. In San Francisco, Joel Engardio wishes his city would keep the door open to responsible uses of the technology.

JOEL ENGARDIO: There's got to be a balance that actually works where you can be both safe and free.

KASTE: He runs a group called Stop Crime SF, formed in response to rampant car break-ins. He says as more residents send in video clips from their home security cameras, facial recognition could help the police to ID suspects more easily. That's why he wishes the city would consider a temporary moratorium rather than an outright ban.

ENGARDIO: When you're in a political climate where your default is just to ban something then you preclude yourself from actually using the benefits of a technology.

KASTE: But privacy advocates worry that waiting to see the benefits of facial recognition will mean giving this technology time to entrench itself as a form of mass surveillance. Alvaro Bedoya runs the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, which has tracked the advance of facial recognition. He says, yes, American police right now use the technology mostly forensically to investigate crimes. But he believes that the police are interested in more real-time applications.

ALVARO BEDOYA: More and more, you see tidbits in trade press, and you see documents from cities and states suggesting that they are making major investments in face surveillance.

KASTE: And that's why Bedoya welcomes this vote by San Francisco, arguably the most tech-savvy big city in the country. If it signals that a red line should be drawn around facial recognition, he says other cities, states and even the federal government might take notice. Martin Kaste, NPR News. </s> San Francisco supervisors voted Tuesday to ban the use of facial recognition software by police and other city departments, becoming the first U.S. city to outlaw a rapidly developing technology that has alarmed privacy and civil liberties advocates.

The ban is part of broader legislation that requires city departments to establish use policies and obtain board approval for surveillance technology they want to purchase or are using at present. Several other local governments require departments to disclose and seek approval for surveillance technology.

“This is really about saying: ‘We can have security without being a security state. We can have good policing without being a police state.’ And part of that is building trust with the community based on good community information, not on Big Brother technology,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who championed the legislation.

The ban applies to San Francisco police and other municipal departments. It does not affect use of the technology by the federal government at airports and ports, nor does it limit personal or business use.

The San Francisco board did not spend time Tuesday debating the outright ban on facial recognition technology, focusing instead on the possible burdens placed on police, the transit system and other city agencies that need to maintain public safety.

“I worry about politicizing these decisions,” said Supervisor Catherine Stefani, a former prosecutor who was the sole no vote.
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The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a non-profit think-tank based in Washington, D.C., issued a statement chiding San Francisco for considering the facial recognition ban. It said advanced technology makes it cheaper and faster for police to find suspects and identify missing people.

Critics were silly to compare surveillance usage in the United States with China, given that one country has strong constitutional protections and the other does not, said Daniel Castro, the foundation’s vice-president.

“In reality, San Francisco is more at risk of becoming Cuba than China–a ban on facial recognition will make it frozen in time with outdated technology,” he said.

It’s unclear how many San Francisco departments are using surveillance and for what purposes, said Peskin. There are valid reasons for license-plate readers, body cameras, and security cameras, he said, but the public should know how the tools are being used or if they are being abused.

San Francisco’s police department stopped testing face ID technology in 2017. A representative at Tuesday’s board meeting said the department would need two to four additional employees to comply with the legislation.

Privacy advocates have squared off with public safety proponents at several heated hearings in San Francisco, a city teeming with tech innovation and the home of Twitter, Airbnb and Uber.

Those who support the ban say the technology is flawed and a serious threat to civil liberties, especially in a city that cherishes public protest and privacy. They worry people will one day not be able to go to a mall, the park or a school without being identified and tracked.

But critics say police need all the help they can get, especially in a city with high-profile events and high rates of property crime. That people expect privacy in public space is unreasonable given the proliferation of cellphones and surveillance cameras, said Meredith Serra, a member of a resident public safety group Stop Crime SF.

“To me, the ordinance seems to be a costly additional layer of bureaucracy that really does nothing to improve the safety of our citizens,” she said at a hearing.

The city of Oakland is considering similar legislation. </s> (CNN) — San Francisco, long one of the most tech-friendly and tech-savvy cities in the world, is now the first in the United States to prohibit its government from using facial-recognition technology.

The ban is part of a broader anti-surveillance ordinance that the city’s Board of Supervisors approved on Tuesday. Eight of the board’s 11 supervisors voted in favor of it. The ordinance, which outlaws the use of facial-recognition technology by police and other government departments, could also spur other local governments to take similar action.

Facial-recognition systems are increasingly used everywhere from police departments to rock concerts to homes, stores and schools. They are designed to identify specific people from live video feeds, recorded video footage or still photos, often by comparing their features with a set of faces (such as mugshots).

San Francisco’s new rule, which is set to go into effect in a month, forbids the use of facial-recognition technology by the city’s 53 departments — including the San Francisco Police Department, which doesn’t currently use such technology but did test it out between 2013 and 2017. However, the ordinance carves out an exception for federally controlled facilities at San Francisco International Airport and the Port of San Francisco. The ordinance doesn’t prevent businesses or residents from using facial recognition or surveillance technology in general — such as on their own security cameras. And it also doesn’t do anything to limit police from, say, using footage from a person’s Nest camera to assist in a criminal case.

“We all support good policing but none of us want to live in a police state,” San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who introduced the bill earlier this year, told CNN Business ahead of the vote.

The ordinance adds yet more fuel to the fire blazing around facial-recognition technology. While the technology grows in popularity, it has come under increased scrutiny as concerns mount regarding its deployment, accuracy, and even where the faces come from that are used to train the systems.

In San Francisco, Peskin is concerned that the technology is “so fundamentally invasive” that it shouldn’t be used.

“I think San Francisco has a responsibility to speak up on things that are affecting the entire globe, that are happening in our front yard,” he said.

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, facial features are analyzed and then compared with labeled faces in a database.

Yet AI researchers and civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union are particularly concerned about accuracy and bias in facial-recognition systems. There are concerns that they are not as effective at correctly recognizing people of color and women. One reason for this issue is that the datasets used to train the software may be disproportionately male and white.

The ACLU is one of many civil-rights groups supporting the ordinance. Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, said the raft of issues posed by facial-recognition systems mean the city’s legislation would prevent harm to community members. He also expects that the rule will prompt other cities to follow suit.

“With this vote, San Francisco has declared that face surveillance technology is incompatible with a healthy democracy and that residents deserve a voice in decisions about high-tech surveillance,” he said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “We applaud the city for listening to the community, and leading the way forward with this crucial legislation.”

There are currently no federal laws addressing how artificial-intelligence technology in general, or facial-recognition systems specifically, can be used, though a Senate bill introduced in March would force companies to get consent from consumers before collecting and sharing identifying data.

A few states and local governments have made their own efforts: Illinois, for example, has a law that requires companies get consent from customers before collecting biometric information. California’s senate is currently considering a bill that would ban police in the state from using biometric technology — such as facial recognition — with body-camera footage.

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

How surveillance could be harder in San Francisco

Under the new San Francisco law, any city department that wants to use surveillance technology or services (such as the police department if it were interested in buying new license-plate readers, for example) must first get approval from the Board of Supervisors. That process will include submitting information about the technology and how it will be used, and presenting it at a public hearing. With the new rule, any city department that already uses surveillance tech will need to tell the board how it is being used.

The ordinance also states that the city will need to report to the Board of Supervisors each year on whether surveillance equipment and services are being used in the ways for which they were approved, and include details like what data was kept, shared or erased.

In a statement ahead of the vote, the San Francisco Police Department said it “looks forward” to working with the city’s supervisors, the ACLU, and others to develop laws that speak to tech-related privacy worries “while balancing the public safety concerns of our growing, international city.”

“In accordance with the legislation, we are in the process of auditing our technologies and related policies,” the statement said.

Some locals have been vocally opposed to the surveillance ordinance, including several groups of residents. Frank Noto, president of Stop Crime SF, a group focused on crime prevention, said prior to the vote that his organization recognizes privacy and civil-liberties concerns that may have prompted the ordinance’s introduction, but sees it as flawed legislation largely because it requires the police department to get approval from the city for existing surveillance technology.

After the ordinance passed, Stop Crime SF vice president Joel Engardio said that overall the legislation is “necessary and helpful” though it “could have been better.”

And while Stop Crime SF sees the faults in existing facial-recognition technology, it’s also concerned about prohibiting its use entirely. The group believes a moratorium on using it might be a better option so that it’s possible to use the technology when it improves.

“When responsibly used, it could be a good public safety tool,” Engardio said. </s> SAN FRANCISCO (REUTERS) - San Francisco officials on Tuesday (May 14) voted eight to one to ban the purchase and use of facial recognition technology by city personnel, in a move to regulate tools that local Silicon Valley companies helped develop.

The ordinance, which also would require city departments to submit surveillance technology policies for public vetting, can become final after a second vote next week by the same officials, the city's Board of Supervisors.

The action puts San Francisco at the forefront of increasing discontent in the United States over facial recognition, which government agencies have used for years and now has become more powerful with the rise of cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies.

Since last year, Amazon.com Inc has come under scrutiny for selling an image analysis and ID service to law enforcement, which researchers say struggles to identify the gender of individuals with darker skin, prompting fears of unjust arrests. Amazon has defended its work and said all users must follow the law.

Civil rights groups, as well as some companies including Microsoft Corp, which markets a facial recognition service, have called for regulation of the technology in recent months. This has added momentum to the effort in San Francisco. </s> Image copyright Reuters Image caption High-definition cameras "map" faces in a crowd and compare them to existing images

Legislators in San Francisco have voted to ban the use of facial recognition, the first US city to do so.

The emerging technology will not be allowed to be used by local agencies, such as the city’s transport authority, or law enforcement.

Additionally, any plans to buy any kind of new surveillance technology must now be approved by city administrators.

Opponents of the measure said it will put people’s safety at risk and hinder efforts to fight crime.

Those in favour of the move said the technology as it exists today is unreliable, and represented an unnecessary infringement on people’s privacy and liberty.

In particular, opponents argued the systems are error prone, particularly when dealing with women or people with darker skin.

"With this vote, San Francisco has declared that face surveillance technology is incompatible with a healthy democracy and that residents deserve a voice in decisions about high-tech surveillance," said Matt Cagle from the American Civil Liberties Union in Northern California.

"We applaud the city for listening to the community, and leading the way forward with this crucial legislation. Other cities should take note and set up similar safeguards to protect people's safety and civil rights."

The vote was passed by San Francisco’s supervisors 8-1, with two absentees. The measure is expected to be officially passed into city law after a second vote next week.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The move angered campaigners who said the tech would help fight crime

"Instead of an outright ban, we believe a moratorium would have been more appropriate," said Joel Engardio, vice-president of Stop Crime SF.

"We agree there are problems with facial recognition ID technology and it should not be used today. But the technology will improve and it could be a useful tool for public safety when used responsibly. We should keep the door open for that possibility."

The new rules will not apply to security measures at San Francisco’s airport or sea port, as they are run by federal, not local, agencies.

Some campaigners unsuccessfully urged for the measures not to apply to local police. While San Francisco’s officers do not currently use facial recognition technology, a number of other police forces across the US do.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption WATCH: Could facial recognition cut crime?

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Do you have more information about this or any other technology story? You can reach Dave directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +1 (628) 400-7370 </s> San Francisco is the first US city to ban facial recognition - Webroot response

Following the news that San Francisco has become the first city to ban the use of facial recognition in local agencies, such as law enforcement, see a comment below from Matthew Aldridge, Senior Solution Architect at Webroot, who believes that while the technology can work well, the risk of biometric data being stolen is too great a risk for it to be deployed worldwide:

“It is great to see San Francisco leading the way on this debate. We’ll see in time whether this course of action is the best one, but it is important that this discussion is ongoing with all legislators. There are many factors to consider here, ranging from privacy concerns for the many to the detection of the wrongdoings of the few. In this case it seems that the concerns of the many have prevailed.

There are however legitimate applications from law enforcement and other similar agencies where face recognition technology could greatly reduce policing costs and increase the chances of successful prosecutions in certain cases. In these situations it should only be perpetrators of crime who have their biometrics stored in this way. There is a temptation in mass surveillance to build a profile on every unique person detected, track their movements and categorise them into behaviour groups. This type of approach is being taken for example in China, where the state is able to not only do this, but to map the profiles to the identities of the individual citizens concerned, raising questions about how and why this data is being used.

Current facial recognition technology can work well, but is far from perfect. Despite its shortcomings, it demonstrates its value by reducing the workload of investigators, effectively augmenting their role. Facial recognition for personal use - such as tagging photos and authenticating access to your smartphone - is a very different application and should not be confused with mass surveillance at city and state level. There is a real chance of that biometric data being leaked, stolen or hacked and it is the associated privacy and human rights risks of the technology that we must continue to address through ongoing legislation combined with improved technical controls.”
San Francisco becomes the first U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition systems by law enforcement.