Civil rights groups ask Biden administration to oppose facial recognition software

Civil rights groups are pushing the Biden administration to take a stand against facial recognition technology, saying the rapidly spreading software poses “profound and unprecedented threats” to Americans’ freedom and way of life. The American Civil Liberties Union and more than 40 other groups urged President Joe Biden in a letter Tuesday to freeze federal use of facial recognition and block federal funds from being used by state and local governments to buy or access the artificial-intelligence tools.

The groups believe a Democrat-controlled government will be more receptive to their arguments of the software’s bias and privacy threats than the previous administration.

But the advocates are certain to face resistance from law enforcement and other facial recognition proponents who argue that a technology widely used to unlock phones and confirm travelers’ identities should also be made available to scan for wanted fugitives and investigate crimes.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The groups say the continued expansion of facial recognition runs counter to Biden’s inaugurationspeech declaration that the government should work to advance “equity, civil rights [and] racial justice.” The technology has been shown in research to return inaccurate matches more often when assessing people of color, and it has been faulted in three separate wrongful arrests of Black men who were falsely identified by a police facial recognition search.

The technology’s developers and defenders argue that it is largely accurate and will improve over time. They caution that it should only be used as an investigative aid for officers looking for leads on whom to pursue, not as a primary piece of evidence.

But the letter’s signers say the software poses a clear threat to civil rights, regardless of its accuracy, because it could be used by government authorities to silently track innocent people or surveil protests.

“Even if the technology worked perfectly, it would facilitate the mass tracking of each person’s movements in public space something intolerable in a free and open society,” the letter states. “We cannot allow its normalization.”

The face-scanning software can be used to identify people from afar without their knowledge or consent, and it works by quickly comparing a search photo against a vast database of driver licenses, mug shots and other images.

The software is widely used now to unlock phones, identify people in online photos and grant access at schools, stadiums and public housing complexes. Twenty of the country’s biggest airports also use facial recognition to scan travelers’ faces.