The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday sent a letter to the Justice Department urging it to investigate the police use of facial recognition.
The letter was sent by the ACLU and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, representing 50 national civil rights, civil liberties, faith and privacy organizations total nationwide.
The letter comes following the release of a report by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology that found police departments nationwide are using facial recognition technologies to identify and track individuals — be it crossing the street or attending protests.
The report argued that the technologies have a disparate impact on minorities.
“We need to stop the widespread use of face recognition technology by police until meaningful safeguards are in place,” said Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU legislative counsel. “Half of all adults in the country are in government face recognition databases, yet the vast majority of law enforcement agencies using this technology lack clear policies, audits to ensure accuracy and transparency.”
In nearby Maryland, the Georgetown report found its system includes license photos of more than 2 million residents — and has not been audited since its launch in 2001.
The report recommended that laws be passed to regulate facial recognition, suggesting that mug shots be the default photo for the databases.
“We would not let anyone drive a car without working brakes,” Guliani said. “Similarly, technologies like face recognition should not be deployed without basic safeguards to ensure that they do not harm the very communities they seek to protect.”
Read the full Georgetown report here, and the ACLU letter here.
