Few Rules Govern Police Use of Facial-Recognition Technology

Police departments pay Amazon to use facial-recognition technology the company says can “identify persons of interest against a collection of millions of faces in real-time.”  More than two dozen nonprofits wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to ask that he stop selling the technology to police, after the ACLU of Northern California revealed documents to shine light on the sales. The letter argues that the technology will inevitably be misused, accusing the company of providing “a powerful surveillance system readily available to violate rights and target communities of color.” The revelation highlights a key question: What laws or regulations govern police use of the facial-recognition technology? The answer: more or less none. State and federal laws generally leave police departments free to do things like search video or images collected from public cameras for particular faces, for example. Cities and local departments can set their own policies and guidelines, but even some early adopters of the technology haven’t done so. “This is a perfect example of technology outpacing the law,” says Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There are no rules.”