John,

No one should be forced to submit to facial recognition to keep their job—and no one should lose their job because of facial recognition that can’t correctly identify people.

Sign the petition: Tell Uber and Uber Eats to stop using facial identification on drivers!

A recent story exposed how Uber Eats drivers in the UK have wrongfully been fired because of faulty facial recognition.¹ Uber requires drivers to submit selfies to confirm their identity, but when the technology fails, and isn’t able to match photos of the drivers with their accounts, drivers get booted off the system and are unable to work.

It’s widely known that most facial recognition algorithms exhibit systemic racial and gender bias, and misidentify women and people of color 10-100% more often than white men.^2,3 This is yet another example of how this is causing real harm.

But beyond the bias in the algorithm, deploying facial recognition in the workplace can exacerbate existing biases, and lead to discrimination, harassment, and exploitation, particularly for frontline workers.

This technology infringes on human rights, puts the biometric data collected at risk of being hacked, and sets up an environment for employers to abuse their abilities to monitor staff.

These threats are why Fight for the Future recently published a piece on why we need to ban private and corporate use of facial recognition, in addition to government and law enforcement use.³ We’ll continue to expand our efforts to address all the ways this surveillance technology is harmful.

For now, you can take action to pressure Uber and Uber Eats to put an end to this discriminatory technology. Tell them to stop using facial recognition on drivers.

Together,

Caitlin at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

1. Wired: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-eats-couriers-facial-recognition

2. MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-finds-gender-skin-type-bias-artificial-intelligence-systems-0212

3. NIST: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2019/12/nist-study-evaluates-effects-race-age-sex-face-recognition-software

4. Fight for the Future on Medium: https://fightfortheftr.medium.com/why-we-absolutely-must-ban-private-use-of-facial-recognition-98094736933

Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.