I am writing to urge your support for HB 1654, concerning the procurement and use of facial recognition technology by government entities in Washington. Face surveillance, also known as facial recognition, gives the government unprecedented power to automatically identify, locate, and track people based on images of their faces. It is being widely adopted, including by many agencies in Washington, but without safeguards and without considering what constitutes acceptable and off-limits uses of this technology. HB 1654 would create a task force to have this important discussion; would ensure through Attorney General certification that the technology could only be used if shown to be free of bias; and would halt public use of this technology without warrant or suspicion, including in police body cameras.
Face surveillance poses unique civil rights and civil liberties concerns: A person can choose to not drive their car or not to bring their cell phone to a political protest, but they cannot leave their face at home. It can leave communities hesitant to engage in constitutionally protected free speech, such as attending protests, going to places of worship, or just going about their daily lives.
Face surveillance hits vulnerable communities hardest: The government has long used surveillance technologies to target specific communities. For example, since communities of color are already under much more video and image surveillance than white neighborhoods, using face surveillance in these over-surveilled areas will worsen disparate impacts in law enforcement. Current facial recognition technology is also biased and inaccurate.
Unfortunately, existing federal and state law places no clear limits on the use of facial recognition technology. Face surveillance in some form is in use by at least 11 Washington agencies, and 33 agencies have made requests to use another agency’s technology. In addition to creating surveillance concerns, facial recognition technology enables affect recognition, unproven technology that purports to detect personality, inner feelings, mental health, and worker engagement based on images or video of faces.
The Legislature should protect communities by ensuring this technology is not deployed without full consideration of its impact and should adopt basic safeguards against biased, suspicionless, and warrantless use immediately. I urge you to move HB 1654 forward with a do-pass recommendation.
