Facial recognition technology was touted as the future of consumer ease at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. But the ACLU of Massachusetts said it has serious privacy concerns about the use of the technology.
Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, told Boston Public Radio Tuesday that while the civil liberties organization acknowledges facial recognition software can be a useful tool in law enforcement, they are proposing a moratorium on it until there are rules in place for how public agencies can use it.
"Face surveillance is something else," Crockford said. "This is turning every single surveillance camera that a government owns out in public space essentially into a sentient tracking device that can catalog the movements and habits and associations, not of one person, but of every single person, every day, for as long as camera footage exists."
The ACLU of Massachusetts recently began pushing a " Press Pause on Face Surveillance" campaign to stop all public use of facial recognition until regulations are in place.
"The bill we're working to support on Beacon Hill would press pause, place a moratorium, on only government use," Crockford said. "Of all facial recognition, surveillance, analysis, technologies, until the legislation can deliberated to come with some regulations about governing the use of facial recognition.
"We'd like to see the use of face surveillance, this tracking of public space, permanently banned."
In this interview, Crockford was joined by ACLU of Massachusetts Executive Director Carol Rose.
