Last month, lawmakers in Olympia failed to agree on a bill that would have regulated the use of facial recognition technology in Washington state. That was better than passing a flawed bill that had tech lobbyist hands all over it, civil libertarians argued at the time.
But the bill’s failure leaves facial recognition basically unregulated here in Washington as lawmakers regroup to—maybe—try again in 2020.
Meanwhile, down in San Francisco, birthplace of our current tech economy, city lawmakers just voted overwhelmingly to ban the use of facial recognition by public agencies, including the police department.
The ACLU, which applauded the San Francisco move, warns that facial recognition technology can be used for mass government surveillance without people’s knowledge or consent. (And that even non-governmental actors, like Taylor Swift, are already doing this.)
Here in Washington, the ACLU also voiced loud concerns to lawmakers about “algorithmic bias.”
In the context of facial recognition, this kind of bias can manifest itself in, for example, members of the Congressional Black Caucus being mistaken for potential criminals more often than white members of Congress.
Similar concerns were voiced at an April 29 “Racism in Algorithms” discussion at the University of Washington.
In Olympia earlier this year, the discussion was more about how to correctly calibrate regulations on facial recognition and what “consent” should look like when face-conscious cameras are on all the time in public and private settings.
It did not appear that any sort of ban on taxpayer-funded agencies using facial recognition was likely, but if San Francisco’s new ban stands, expect it to be part of the discussion in Olympia next year.
