Police use of face recognition technology (FRT) poses a particularly massive risk to our civil liberties particularly for Black men and women and other marginalized communities Thats why EFF supports a ban on government FRT use Halfmeasures arent up to the task

However even as halfmeasures go Californias legislature is currently considering a particularly weak proposal in the form of AB 1814 authored by Asm Phil Ting (San Francisco) It would introduce paltry limits that will do nothing to address the many problems that police use of face recognition raises In fact the bills language could make things worse in California

This something Its worse than nothingby a long shot

For example major police departments in California have pledged not to use Clearview AI a company thats been sued repeatedly for building its database from scraped social media posts in light of public pressure But AB 1814 expressly gives police departments the right to access thirdparty databases including Clearview AI This could give law enforcement agencies cover to use databases that they have previously distanced themselves from and will erode progress civil liberties advocates have already made The bill also states police have access to any state database even if the images were not collected for law enforcement purposes

California should not give law enforcement the green light to mine databases particularly those built for completely different reasons This goes against what people are expecting when they give their information to one database only to learn later that information has been informing police face surveillance

Finally AB 1814 fails to even meet the bar of restrictions other police departments have agreed to adopt As we have previously written thenbspDetroit Police Department agreed to limits on its use of face recognition technology after it falsely arrested Robert Williams as a result of a incorrect face recognition match As part of these limits the Detroit police have agreed to bar arrests based solely on face recognition resultsnbspor the results of the ensuing photo lineup Their agreement also affirms that prosecutors and defense attorneys will have access to information about any uses of FRT in cases where law enforcement files charges

The California bill does not even include these safeguards It says that police can not use a database match as the sole basis for an arrest but it would allow a photo lineup based on a match to be considered a second technique This puts people who looknbsplike the suspect in front of witnesses who may be likely to pick that personeven if it is an entirely different person That lets law enforcement agencies easily clear the low bar the bill sets

AB 1814 is sitting in the Senate Appropriations Committee EFF has joined with dozens of civil liberties organizations to urge the committee not to advance the bill If it does move forward well be asking you to help us fight it on the Senate floor

Proponents of the bill have argued that essentially it is better to do something than have no guardrails in place But this something Its worse than nothingby a long shot