Facial recognition in every California county?
Watch out, it may be coming.
When conversations about facial recognition technology occur, they are usually highly technical and somewhat dystopian. We talk about error rates and human bias, pixels and artificial intelligence, and a science fiction future of being instantly identified in public for any minor violation of law, such as unpaid parking tickets.
But technology with startling implications often sneaks through the back door in far more pedestrian ways. That is the story of Assembly Bill 751. It was introduced in California’s state Legislature earlier this year by Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks.
Irwin — who has an engineering background and whose husband is an executive with Amazon’s Ring security systems — was focused on the problem of vital records and how people could easily and conveniently access them during the pandemic. She fastened onto the idea of the electronic notary, an online service that could provide identification of a requester by using facial recognition.
AB 751 makes permanent a temporary authorization issued for the pandemic and encourages every county recorder in California, except the handful of municipalities that have already banned governmental use of facial recognition, to acquire it. This seemingly innocuous bill, which only wants to make life more convenient, would facilitate the largest expansion of government use of facial recognition the state of California has ever seen.
The current error rate in the technology of 10% to 15% for everyone, and up to 33% for people with darker skin tones, women and youth, should give us pause. But even as the accuracy inevitably improves over time, there are still grave risks.
Buzzfeed’s April expose of leaked documents from rogue facial recognition vendor Clearview AI showed that 140 different California law enforcement agencies sampled the technology, most without any formal permission. With, as AB 751 encourages, a software package housed conveniently over at the county recorder, there is little doubt that many law enforcement agencies would find a way to use it if it’s there.
This is exactly the wrong way to enlarge the use of a dangerous and invasive technology, much less one whose broader implications have convinced many that government and corporate use of it should be banned. Facial recognition technology is uniquely vulnerable to abuses of state power, to being weaponized against marginalized groups and to create a chilling effect that negatively affects our rights to gather, protest, vote and move about public areas freely.
Facial recognition technology in every county recorder’s office in California is dystopia through the back door.
AB 751 is currently being considered in the state Senate. Californians can still say no to the widespread government acquisition of facial recognition technology, but time is running out.
The price of avoiding that inconvenient trip to a notary public, in this case, will be way too high.
Tracy Rosenberg is the advocacy director for Oakland Privacy, a Bay Area citizens’ coalition that works to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment.
