The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs is facing backlash after admitting it took more than 1,700 photos of students without their consent. The school took the photos as part of an ongoing study on facial recognition, according to the Colorado Springs Independent.
Computer Science professor Terrance Boult began the study in 2012, and it relied on a single camera to capture hundreds of photos from its mounted position on a building in an area of campus with heavy foot traffic. The camera snapped pictures of students as they walked to and from classes on 20 days between February 2012 and September 2013.
The study was designed to test the effectiveness of facial recognition algorithms under different distances, lighting, and weather. Once taken, researchers categorized the photos based on the individual they captured and were able to construct whole visual profiles for every student, including the different outfits each student wore different days. Researchers used this information to create a dataset named “UnConstrained College Students” as a means to train facial recognition algorithms and other surveillance tools.
According to the Colorado Springs Independent, the U.S. military and various intelligence agencies funded this study and often fund similar facial recognition studies on university campuses. The dataset is available “only to U.S. institutions and with very restricted access,” according to the UnConstrained College Students webpage.
Boult also told the Colorado Springs Independent that it isn’t illegal to take photos of people in public, and that facial recognition software can be used for good ends, such as correctly identifying criminals and exonerating the innocent. “Can it be misused? Absolutely,” he said. “My concern is when they’re trying to use it for good and it goes bad.”
Nevertheless, the study sparked backlash from students, and experts on surveillance technology questioned its legality.
“It is absolutely a violation of privacy but unfortunately this is something not far out of UCCS’ modus operandi,” Devon Johnson, a spring 2019 graduate from the university, told Campus Reform.
“This is essentially normalizing Peeping Tom culture,” David Maass, senior investigative researcher from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Colorado Springs Independent.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization which bills itself as dedicated to “defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation,” notes that facial recognition software is “prone to error, which can implicate people for crimes they haven’t committed,” and “has been used to target people engaging in protected speech.”
In response to the outcry, the university released a document titled “Addressing concerns from the non research community.” The document defended the study, highlighting factual errors in reporting on the dataset and how they have led to misunderstanding.
The document said the dataset is only available under a “restricted license agreement” and is therefore not in the public domain. The document also notes that although government-funded, the study was not requested, nor was the dataset provided, to any U.S. government agencies. Finally, the document said that the dataset does not record the names or identifiers of students captured in the photos, and that students can individually petition Boult to have their photos removed from the facial recognition software.
However, the document noted that “since the dataset is hard and the technology isn’t so advanced, a face recognition software won’t be able to remove all your pictures.”
Troy Worden is a recent graduate in English and philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of the Berkeley College Republicans in 2017.
