John,
Yesterday, we sent a team out to run live facial recognition surveillance in the halls of Congress, Capitol Hill, and downtown D.C. to try to find Members of Congress, journalists, lobbyists, and to keep track of how many total people we scanned in the process.
We took 13,740 scans of people and our software correctly identified 1 Member of Congress, and misidentified 7 journalists and 25 Amazon lobbyists.
Did we scan you?
The goal of this action was to highlight how terrifyingly easy it is for anyone—a government agent, a corporation, or just a creepy stalker—to conduct biometric monitoring and violate basic rights at a massive scale.
We did this to make a point, and we’re going to delete the data that we collect. But someone else could use the same technology to do unimaginable harm.
We need Congress to pass an immediate ban on law enforcement and government use of face surveillance, and to urgently and severely limit its use for private and commercial purposes.
You can help make sure this action has a big impact: upload a photo of yourself and we’ll let you know if we scanned you. You can also forward this to anyone you know who works in the Capitol or might have been in the area. Your photo, and all other photos and footage collected in this action, will be destroyed on November 20.
Take a second to check to see if we scanned you and help amplify how invasive and dangerous facial recognition.
Together,
Evan at Fight for the Future
P.S. You can read more about our live facial recognition, and see photos and videos here.
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.
