Washington State Committee Passes Three Year Ban on Facial Recognition
FEBRUARY 6, 2020
On Tuesday, a House committee approved a bill to put a three-year ban, or moratorium, on the use of facial recognition for surveillance or any other purposes by the state and its political subdivisions. Passage into law would represent an important first step towards protecting privacy and rejecting the national surveillance state.
A coalition of three Democrats introduced House Bill 2856 (HB2856) on Jan. 27. The legislation would put a three-year ban on the use of facial recognition by government in Washington State. If passed into law, state and local government agencies would be prohibited from “obtaining, retaining, requesting, accessing, or using any facial recognition technology or any information obtained from or by use of facial recognition technology.”
Additionally, any information obtained from or by the use of facial recognition would be barred from being used as evidence in any trial or other proceeding before a court or other authority subject to the jurisdiction of Washington.
This legislation is part of a broader nationwide movement to limit this invasive surveillance technology at the local and state level. San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, California have all prohibited government use of facial recognition technology, along with Somerville, Northhampton, Cambridge and Brookline, Massachusetts. Portland, Oregon is considering a similar ban. The California governor recently signed a bill that imposes a 3-year ban on the use of the tech in conjunction with police body-worn cameras, leading to the shutdown of one of the biggest facial recognition programs in the country.
IMPACT ON FEDERAL PROGRAMS
A recent report revealed that the federal government has turned state drivers’ license photos into a giant facial recognition database, putting virtually every driver in America in a perpetual electronic police lineup. The revelations generated widespread outrage, but this story isn’t new. The federal government has been developing a massive, nationwide facial recognition system for years.
The FBI rolled out a nationwide facial-recognition program in the fall of 2014, with the goal of building a giant biometric database with pictures provided by the states and corporate friends.
In 2016, the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law released “The Perpetual Lineup,” a massive report on law enforcement use of facial recognition technology in the U.S. You can read the complete report at perpetuallineup.org. The organization conducted a year-long investigation and collected more than 15,000 pages of documents through more than 100 public records requests. The report paints a disturbing picture of intense cooperation between the federal government, and state and local law enforcement to develop a massive facial recognition database.
more:
https://www.activistpost.com/2020/02/washington-state-committee-passes-three-year-ban-on-facial-recognition.html
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