A new report out by the National Academies, and sponsored by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, calls for swift government action on the use of facial recognition technology – including Federal legislation and an executive order.
According to the authors, facial recognition technology has grown in use with the rapid advancement of AI, but the U.S. is lacking in “authoritative guidance, regulations, or laws to adequately address issues related to facial recognition.”
“A powerful and increasingly used tool, facial recognition technology is useful for a large range of identity verification and identification applications, offering capabilities for checking whether someone is who they say they are and identifying a person in an image,” the report’s coinciding press release states. “Systems utilize trained artificial intelligence models to extract facial features and create a biometric template from an image, and compare the features in the template to the features of another image or set of images to produce a similarity score.”
However, the report notes that facial recognition technology can interfere with and substantially affect the values embodied in U.S. privacy, civil liberties, and human rights commitments.
For example, the report says there are two principal categories of concern in facial recognition. One is potential harm from problematic use or misuse of the technology, which becomes more salient as the technology becomes more accurate and capable. The second is potential harm from errors or limitations in the technology itself, such as when systems have different false positive or false negative rates for different demographic groups.
“Facial recognition technology has the potential to impact civil liberties, human rights, and privacy in meaningful ways, because it changes the scale and cost of collecting detailed data about a person’s every move,” said the National Academies Committee on Facial Recognition co-chair Edward Felten.
“The number of uses will continue to expand as the technology becomes more widespread and inexpensive ? for example, it is likely only a matter of time before stores routinely scan customers’ faces upon entry to personalize shopping experiences and marketing, and perhaps more troubling, private individuals could potentially use it to target others,” he said.
Some concerns about facial recognition technology can be addressed by improving the technology itself, the report notes. Others require changes to procedures or training, restrictions on when or how facial recognition technology is used, and regulation of the conduct that facial recognition technology enables.
“Facial recognition technology generates novel and complex legal challenges and raises a variety of distinct, unsettled legal questions. It also raises complicated social questions about privacy and public and private surveillance, given the highly personal implications of the technology,” said Jennifer Mnookin, co-chair of the committee.
“It is crucial that governments make tackling these issues a priority ? failing or choosing not to adopt policies and regulations on the development and use of facial recognition technology would effectively cede decision-making and rulemaking on these important questions of great public concern entirely to the private sector and the marketplace,” she said.
Specifically, the report recommends that the president issue an executive order on the development of guidelines for the appropriate use of facial recognition technology by Federal agencies. Any executive order should also address both equity concerns and the protection of privacy and civil liberties, the authors said.
The report also suggests that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) serve as a “hub” for the government’s facial recognition technology activities and standards.
The government should also establish a program to develop and refine a risk management framework to help organizations identify and mitigate the risks of proposed facial recognition technology applications, the report says.
It calls on the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to establish a working group to develop and periodically review standards for reasonable and equitable use of the technology by Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
Finally, the report calls for Congress to pass Federal legislation that will protect against the misuse of facial recognition technology. Specifically, the report says that any forthcoming bill should place limitations on the storing of face images; require training of system operators and decision-makers, particularly for applications where errors can significantly harm subjects, such as in law enforcement; and pass a Federal privacy law specific to facial recognition technology; among other protections.
Congress has introduced several pieces of legislation this session in an effort to limit the use of the technology among government entities, including law enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
For example, late last year, a bipartisan group of six senators introduced the Traveler Privacy Protection Act of 2023 which aims to strip TSA of its authority to use facial recognition technology as part of its airline passenger screening program and require the agency to get rid of data obtained by facial recognition technology.
Early this year, TSA announced its plans to ramp up its facial recognition technology usage at its airports in an effort to bolster its customer experience.
