Pols push to stop fed use of facial recognition
Facial recognition is facing a showdown in Congress.
U.S. Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren are joined by U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley in reintroducing legislation to tamp down on the government’s use of biometric technology, which includes facial recognition.
Executive Director of ACLU Massachusetts Carol Rose said people shouldn’t worry “that government agencies are keeping tabs on their every movement.”
The bill would, under almost any circumstance, make it illegal for any federal agent or official to “acquire, possess, access or use” any biometric surveillance system.
This includes facial recognition, voice recognition, gait recognition and “other immutable characteristic(s),” according to the bill. The bill would also prevent a state or local government from receiving federal financial assistance if it uses these technologies.
“Facial recognition technology is flawed and systemically biased, and has exacerbated the criminalization and over-surveillance that Black and brown communities face,” Pressley said in a statement.
Pressley represents two of the first East Coast cities to outlaw biometric technology, Cambridge and Somerville. Boston, Brookline, Northampton and Springfield have also banned its use.
“We do not have to forgo privacy and justice for safety,” Markey said.
Pulling a pistol from his waistband, the young man spun his human shield toward police.
“Don’t do it!” a pursuing officer pleaded. The young man complied, releasing the bystander and tossing the gun, which skittered across the city street and then into the hands of police.
They soon learned that the 9 mm Beretta had a rap sheet. Bullet casings linked it to four shootings, all of them in Albany, N.Y.
And there was something else. The pistol was U.S. Army property, a weapon intended for use against America’s enemies, not on its streets.
The Army couldn’t say how its Beretta M9 got to New York’s capital. Until the June 2018 police foot chase, the Army didn’t even realize someone had stolen the gun. Inventory records checked by investigators said the M9 was 600 miles away — safe inside Fort Bragg, N.C.
“It’s incredibly alarming,” said Albany County District Attorney David Soares. “It raises the other question as to what else is seeping into a community that could pose a clear and present danger.”
The armed services and the Pentagon are not eager for the public to know the answer.
In the first public accounting of its kind in decades, an Associated Press investigation has found that at least 1,900 U.S. military firearms were lost or stolen during the 2010s, with some resurfacing in violent crimes. Because some armed services have suppressed the release of basic information, AP’s total is a certain undercount. Government records covering the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force show pistols, machine guns, shotguns and automatic assault rifles have vanished from armories, supply warehouses, Navy warships, firing ranges and other places where they were used, stored or transported.
Military explosives also were lost or stolen, including armor-piercing grenades that ended up in an Atlanta backyard.
Even elite units are not immune. A former member of a Marines special operations unit was busted with two stolen guns. A Navy SEAL lost his pistol during a fight in a restaurant in Lebanon.
On Tuesday, in the wake of the AP investigation, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that she would be open to new oversight on weapons accountability. The Pentagon used to share annual updates about stolen weapons with Congress, but the requirement to do so ended years ago and public accountability has slipped.
The Army and Air Force couldn’t readily tell AP how many weapons were lost or stolen from 2010 through 2019. So the AP built its own database, using extensive federal Freedom of Information Act requests to review hundreds of military criminal case files or property loss reports, as well as internal military analysis and data from registries of small arms.
Stolen military guns have been sold to street gang members, recovered on felons and used in violent crimes.
The AP identified eight instances in which five different stolen military firearms were used in a civilian shooting or other violent crime, and others in which felons were caught possessing weapons.
“One gun creates a ton of devastation,” Albany County District Attorney Soares said. “And then it puts it on local officials, local law enforcement, to have to work extra hard to try to remove those guns from the community.”