Washington State Law Reins in Govt Use of Facial Recognition Tech

Washington state legislators on Thursday passed a landmark law that, assuming it is signed by Governor Jay Inslee, will rein in how government agencies use facial recognition technology, according to a statement by the state’s House Democrats. The law could provide a layer of protection to porn performers and other sex workers, who have become the targets of tracking online by facial recognition software, as AVN.com has reported, posing a threat to their anonymity and safety. The law will “mandate community input in how facial recognition technology is used and ensure that any use by the government is thoroughly vetted for accuracy, necessity, and fairness,” according to Washington State Rep Debra Entenman, who had sponsored a bill calling for a full, three-year moratorium on face recognition technology. The bill that passed the Washington legislature on Thursday would require public agencies to regularly report their uses of facial recognition technology, and also test that the tech is used fairly and accurately, “as the technology has proven to show biases toward women, people of color, trans/non-binary people, children and seniors,” according to the Democrats’ statement. “This is historic. I don’t know of any other jurisdiction, for sure in the United States, maybe in the world, where it requires the company to expose their underlying data,” state Senator Joe Nguyen, the sponsor of the bill, told the site GeekWire. Ngyuen is also an employee of Microsoft, the tech giant based in Washington. Along with Amazon, also based in Washington, the two companies are among the most active in developing facial recognition technology. But both Amazon and Microsoft have called for government rules to control use of the technology—which remains largely unregulated. A study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that Amazon’s facial recognition software, “Rekognition,” was prone to incorrectly identifying women and people of color at a higher rate than white men, according to the GeekWire report. The American Civil Liberties Union, which co-sponsored the MIT study, has also been active in attempting to place legal restraints on use of the technology. On Thursday, the ACLU sued the federal Department of Homeland Security over use of facial recognition technology at airports. The government claims that the technology helps identify immigrants who attempt to enter, or stay in the country without proper visas. But the ACLU says that the government is keeping information about the facial recognition program secret, and has sued to force DHS to turn over hidden information about the program. Photo by Transportation Security Administration / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain