John,

We’ve been warning about this—a bill that pretends to rein in facial recognition, while actually letting it spread.¹ Now it’s here, and it’s worse than we expected. We have to stop it now.

Take action right now: We need a facial recognition ban.

Senators Coons and Lee introduced a regulatory bill that basically does nothing to stop facial recognition from spreading. Instead it authorizes almost every existing use of facial recognition surveillance:

It authorizes targeted facial recognition, for any reason, without a warrant. This means police could track protesters, catalogue people engaged in political activities, selectively enforce petty offenses, or scan and identify people for ICE detention.
It allows location tracking without a warrant for 72 hours. This is unacceptably long.
It permits the use of real-time facial recognition, which is extremely dangerous considering how often this technology is wrong in identifying someone (want an example? We ran real-time facial recognition in D.C. last week and our program thought it saw Roy Orbison, who died in 1988).²
It gives an exemption on foreign intelligence information, which is a giant loophole that lets cops do whatever they want as long and they claim it’s related to national security (and we all know how that works).
It only applies to federal agencies, so local police can continue to abuse facial recognition without limits.

If this bill passes it will legalize facial recognition as we know it, allowing law enforcement and the government to use the technology in ways that harm your privacy, your civil rights, and put you in danger.

Tell you members of Congress: don’t support this bad bill. Pass real legislation to ban facial recognition.

It’s good that Congress is feeling the heat on this issue, but the gaping loopholes are seriously problematic.

We need legislation that bans all law enforcement use of facial recognition, and strictly limits its use by private individuals and corporations. And if this weak bill passes, then Congress can wash their hands of this issue, pretend they fixed it, and we’ll never stop the spread of facial recognition.

We have to kill this bill, or we’ll never stop facial recognition. Take action now.

Together,

Caitlin at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

1. The Hill: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/470486-senators-introduce-bipartisan-bill-restricting-facial-recognition-tech-for

2. Medium: https://medium.com/@fightfortheftr/we-scanned-thousands-of-faces-in-dc-today-to-show-why-facial-recognition-surveillance-should-be-3360958a76f1

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