Facial recognition: how the technology is used in different countries

by time news

2023-05-14 08:59:25

The European Parliament began to consider a bill significantly restricting the use of facial recognition technology in surveillance cameras. With the spread of such technologies in many countries, heated public discussions about the legality and ethics of their mass use are increasingly emerging.

In which countries recognition has become massive

Last Thursday, two committees of the European Parliament – the Committee on the Internal Market and the Committee on Civil Liberties – approved the draft Law on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act) (.pdf). Among other things, it provides for a ban on the use of facial recognition technology in outdoor surveillance cameras in public places and the restriction of other “remote biometric identification” systems.

Now, in June, the entire European Parliament must vote on it, and after that, discussions of the bill with the European Commission and EU member states will take place. It is expected that the law will be finally adopted at the end of this year or early next year.

According to a special research Comparitech and Datawrapper, conducted in 100 countries of the world, in 70% of countries, authorities and law enforcement agencies have some level of access to face recognition data from outdoor surveillance cameras.

According to how often and seamlessly the police use such technologies, the researchers identified five levels of such access and distribution.

In the first group of countries where the level of use of facial recognition technology by the police is maximum – researchers define it as “excessive / intrusive / aggressive” – ​​includes China, Japan, Argentina, Russia and Belarus.

To countries with high usage levels include Iran, India, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, UAE, France, Italy, Greece, Netherlands, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador.

Average the level is recorded in such countries as the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Ukraine, Sweden, Poland, Serbia, Romania, Turkey, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Iraq, Thailand, Indonesia. Among the countries where such technologies are still in the testing stage and therefore limited in their application by law, only Spain is indicated.

The last group of countries where police use of such technologies prohibited or there is no data on the use, includes mainly African countries, Papua New Guinea, Cuba, Afghanistan, Syria, Cambodia. The researchers believe that this is due to the fact that the authorities of these countries simply do not have the funds to purchase such a number of surveillance cameras that would make it possible to effectively apply facial recognition technologies.

USA: first banned, now lifting restrictions

Back in June 2021 to Congress USA was introduced project federal law on a moratorium on the use of biometric data collection and facial recognition technologies. The bill proposes to impose a temporary restriction on the use of tracking systems using biometric technologies by federal and regional agencies until a full-fledged federal law regulating the use of such technologies is developed. And while there is no single federal law in the United States, the local legislatures of a number of states have begun to regulate the use of such technologies themselves, mainly for law enforcement agencies.

One of the first in the United States to ban the use of facial recognition surveillance cameras by police was introduced in 2020 by the New Orleans City Council.

This was largely due to the protests of African Americans, outraged by the excessive use of force by the police after the death in May 2020 of black Floyd George during detention.

However, two years later, the New Orleans City Council softened ban, giving the local police the right to ask the court for the right to use facial recognition software in the investigation of crimes of a violent nature. The authorities were forced to soften the ban due to the increase in crime in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A similar situation occurred in the states of Virginia and California. In Virginia, local lawmakers in March 2021 banned the use of facial recognition data by the police and the purchase of related equipment. But less than a year later, in February 2022, the complete ban was lifted, allowing the police to use the data under certain circumstances: when searching for victims; wanted persons; or to identify unidentified corpses.

In September 2019, the California Legislature banned the use of facial recognition on the chest cameras of patrol officers for three years. In September 2022, the ban expired, and in April of this year, the California Legislature’s Data Protection Committee approved bill, which regulates the use of facial recognition technology by the police. Restrictions include measures such as mandatory deletion six months after the recording of images of minors; images of individuals who have not been charged; as well as those who were cleared of charges. In addition, each state law enforcement agency that uses such technologies must create internal use mechanism policies, submit those policies to the California Audit Office, and report to them on compliance with those policies as needed.

However, the bill has drawn sharp criticism from local human rights activists and a number of politicians. They mentioned study National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2019, which stated that the available facial recognition technologies are very imperfect: the error rate in face recognition for citizens of African and Asian origin is much higher than in face recognition for citizens of European origin. In addition, human rights activists said that the bill did not clearly spell out cases of use of technology, which could lead to abuse of power by police officers or violation of human rights.

UK: Started using but afraid of Big Brother

The situation with the use of biometric data from surveillance cameras by the police is also in the stage of heated public discussion. Great Britain. In April it became knownthat the British police intend to start using real-time facial recognition technology. The police cites data published in March, a two-year research National Physical Laboratory. It says that the technologies currently available to the police make it possible to obtain reliable data in 89% of cases, while unambiguous errors were recorded only in 0.02% of cases.

These plans provoked protests from British human rights activists, politicians and lawyers. “The report cited by the police acknowledges that real-time facial recognition has a number of disadvantages, including a higher error rate for faces of people of different races and genders. But even while acknowledging racial and gender bias, the report says police can change software settings to reduce error rates. Given the many existing instances of racism and sexism within the police itself, law enforcement agencies should not have the power to independently change the mechanisms for the use of such discriminatory technologies, ”said Madeleine Stone, director of legal affairs at Big Brother Watch.

Caroline Russell, leader of the Green Party faction in the London Borough Assembly, said that “all Londoners, especially those from communities already subject to excessive police control, will want more transparency in the use of such technologies.”

According to Russell, people want to know how exactly the police decide to compile databases of people to be tracked by cameras, and whether relatives and acquaintances of those who are wanted will get there, for example.

“The government does not yet have uniform regulations governing the use of facial recognition technologies, so the police should not start using them, no matter how advanced these technologies are. Until we resolve ethical and legal issues, we cannot jeopardize the civil liberties of the people of London, ”said the MP.

Brazil: implemented in most states and now restricts

One of the clearest examples of public discussion about the use of facial recognition technology among developing countries is Brazil. At the moment, such technologies work in 21 of the 27 states of the country. However, the deployment of such networks faces sharply criticized by human rights activists and technology experts who believe that the massive dissemination of such technologies and the uncontrolled use of data by the police can become a cause for abuse and discrimination.

According to the research company Panoptico, 90% of people arrested with the help of cameras since 2019 turned out to be black. “As a means of mass surveillance, facial recognition has become an example of a technology that eventually falls apart like a patchwork quilt, failing to fulfill the tasks that were originally assigned to it,” said Matt Mahmoudi, Amnesty International’s technology research division Amnesty Tech. it undermines basic human rights.”

Local Panoptico coordinator Pablo Nunes believes that many citizens are not even aware that cameras are tracking their every move, identifying them. “We don’t have reliable data that such cameras have an impact on reducing crime,” says Mr. Nunesh. “At the same time, the police themselves have repeatedly stated that they want to use such cameras to help protect police officers from lawsuits against them.”

Protests by Brazilian human rights activists and experts have already led to the fact that in May 2021 the court of São Paulo banned the use of facial recognition technology in the subway of this city.

And in June 2022, more than 50 deputies from the legislatures of 13 states launched a joint initiative calling for a ban on the use of facial recognition technologies in public places.

The uniqueness of this initiative is that it brought together representatives of different political parties of the country.

“This appeal united several parties at once. Looking at how the situation develops, it became more than obvious that in different municipalities and states of the country these technologies are used in very different ways. Moreover, we found that in a number of cases, city authorities begin to use such technologies without any public discussion, which leads to rejection of such technologies by civil society and social movements,” said Jordana Almeida, a representative of Coding Rights, who supported the initiative of the deputies. .

Evgeniy Khvostik

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