U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and former tech entrepreneur, wrote to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and South Korean company Suprema HQ, following separate but alarming incidents that impacted both entities and exposed Americans’ personal, permanently identifiable data.
California could become the largest state to protect civil liberties by banning facial recognition technology in police body cameras. The California State Assembly sent Governor Newsom AB 1215, a proposal by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) that prohibits law enforcement from equipping body cameras with facial recognition software and other biometric scanners for three years.
Anxious feelings towards facial recognition can, if unchecked, reach a point where they undermine common sense and our ability to leverage new technologies in the protection of the innocent and prosecution of the guilty.
It’s helpful to reflect on where we are now versus where we are going. Today, there is still more discussion about what might be possible than actual physical products on the market. Much of the conversation centers on practical ways to utilize deep learning and neural networks and how these techniques can improve analytics and significantly reduce false-positives for important events.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is calling for a total ban on the use of facial recognition software for policing, according to a "Justice and Safety for All" pledge he released.
Biometric records containing more than a million fingerprints has been left exposed in a publicly accessible database that included a total of 27.8 million records that featured facial images, uncrypted user names, passwords, employee records and logs of entry to secure areas, among other sensitive information.