Human rights organization, Amnesty International, calls on New York City authorities to ban the use of facial recognition in police activities.
Amnesty International is calling on New York City authorities to prohibit its police force from using facial recognition in their law enforcement activities, claiming that the technology came up short in racial bias tests. The human rights organization also notes that other major cities across the country already restricted its use. The group said that facial recognition technology increases racist policing and threatens the right of an individual to protest.
Amnesty International calls for a ban on facial recognition in New York City https://t.co/MBLvCUPYoB pic.twitter.com/82rEnfUooj — The Verge (@verge) January 26, 2021
In a statement urging New York City to ban the police force's use of the technology in mass surveillance, Amnesty International expressed its belief that there must be a worldwide ban on the use of facial recognition technology in police activities. According to Matt Mahmoudi, a human rights researcher with the human rights organization, the technology risks being weaponized by law enforcement agencies against marginalized communities in many parts of the world.
An Invasive Technology
"New Yorkers should be able to go out about their daily lives without being tracked by facial recognition. Other major cities across the US have already banned facial recognition technology, and New York must do the same," Mahmoudi said. He also added that the invasive technology turns people's identities against them and undermines their fundamental human rights. In an official Amnesty International statement, Mahmoudi is urging the New York City government to ban the use of the technology in law enforcement activities of its police force.
The Urban Justice Center of New York is also echoing the call of Amnesty international in urging New York City to ban the use of facial recognition technology. According to the group's executive director, Albert Fox Cahn, the technology is broken, biased, and is hostile to democracy. "For years, the [New York police department] has used facial recognition to track tens of thousands of New Yorkers, putting New Yorkers of color at risk of false arrest and police violence. Banning facial recognition won't just protect civil rights: it's a matter of life and death," Cahn said.
Failed In Racial Bias Tests
Amnesty International revealed that facial recognition technology failed miserably in several racial bias tests. The human rights group said that in 2016, Georgetown University researchers, upon examining over 10,000 pages of documents, discovered that the police applied facial recognition technology to databases containing "disproportionately African American" information, even though the software used is particularly bad at identifying black faces. The human rights group cited this research and many other studies when it called on New York City to prohibit its police force from using the technology. The group also said that its campaign to end the use of the technology would eventually become global.
