Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

2020-06-10 12:48:00

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Last year, Portland, Oregon, was preparing to pass a new ban on face recognition that would completely prevent government and private companies from using the technology, threatening local companies that sell and use face recognition technology.

Amazon spent 12000 dollars lobbying the government to stop the bill. "Amazon wants to be able to stop the ban, but they can't." The proponent of the proposal, Portland City Council member Jo AnnHardesty, said in an interview with OneZero.

The Public Archives in Portland said it was the first time Amazon had lobbied in the city. The company hopes to at least soften the language in the bill, which, if passed, would mean the strictest controls on face recognition technology in the United States.

The new bill will ban not only the use of face recognition technology at the government and legal levels, but also any commercial use in the private sector. In addition, local institutions are not allowed to evaluate face recognition technology, including systems that are free to the public.

"if we can't stop the implementation of this bill, they also want us to soften our tone so that we can win more room for manoeuvre," Hardesty said. "but they won't succeed."

With regard to the government's use of face recognition technology, some exceptions have been made clear in the Bill. For example, the draft stipulates that face recognition can be used to unlock mobile phones, tag others on social media, or blur faces in pictures and videos. But it is not clear how the bill will apply to private companies.

The city of Portland had planned to vote on the draft before April, but the vote will not open until at least June because of a full blockade during the outbreak. City officials say there are currently no departments or institutions in Portland that use face recognition or biometric technology, including the Portland Police Department. If the regulation is passed, then every municipal body must conduct a technical assessment to ensure compliance with the requirements.

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The laws related to face recognition have a significant impact on Amazon. The company's face recognition system, Rekognition, uses deep learning techniques to analyze faces, identify objects, and distinguish faces in pictures and videos.

According to Amazon's website, Rekognition's customers include the National Football League (NFL) and CBS, and the system is also used by customers in a variety of ways, including identity identification and recognition of people's faces for content tagging in videos.

The Washington County Sheriff's Office is also using Rekognition technology. Washington County is located in the west of Mortenoma County in Portland. Amazon hopes to have an impact on face recognition technology at the local and federal levels, and Amazon President JeffBezos revealed in September that their public policy team is preparing to submit federal legislation on face recognition.

"with all due respect, they are very concerned about the bottom line," Portland City Council member Hardesty said in a recent interview. She admits that the city council office has met with Amazon: "if they can't sell the equipment that collects data, they will soon face a decline in performance."

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According to audit records in Portland, Amazon lobbyists contacted the staff of the mayor's office and four city council members in November and met with three of them in December to discuss face recognition proposals.

City council staff say Amazon wants to change the language in the draft, including how to negate the word "face recognition". Neither Amazon nor Oxley& Associates lobbyists responded to requests for more information.

Out of concern about the intrusiveness and technological insecurity of surveillance, more and more American cities are banning the use of face recognition technology by the government and police, or considering adding some restrictions.

In addition to San Francisco and Oakland, Brooklyn, Cambridge, Northampton, Somerville and Springfield in Massachusetts have banned local governments from using face recognition technology. Boston and New York are considering similar policies.

Most of Amazon's shareholders want to keep selling the technology. Last year, the shareholders vetoed a proposal to limit the sale of facial recognition products in the government and assess the impact of the technology on civil rights and privacy.

From the perspective of civil liberties, the widespread use of face recognition technology may also raise concerns about the invasion of privacy by surveillance in the community. Last October, the American Civil Liberties Association (ACLU) mentioned Amazon in a lawsuit.

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ACLU wants federal legislatures to issue documents on face recognition and biometric technology, which could be used to track, identify and monitor others.

Some face recognition systems have exposed technical flaws that can lead to many unpredictable and serious consequences, including the misrecognition of dark-skinned faces. According to a study released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in December, many face recognition algorithms have a 10 to 100 times error rate in distinguishing blacks from East Asians compared to Caucasians.

In a 2018 study, ACLU found that Rekognition mismatched the faces of 28 members of Congress to arrested criminals. Amazon said the study did not properly evaluate its system.

The city of Portland has a long history of racial discrimination, and face recognition technology is very unfriendly to people of color, so it is important to impose a ban on this technology.

The legislation coincides with Portland's commitment to enact policies on equal use of technology and data. In 2018, Portland created a framework in which priority was given to the use of technology by the most marginalized and vulnerable communities.

Smart City PDX, the city's advisory body that oversees the implementation of these policies, helped draft a resolution on data privacy last year, which includes topics such as equality and the elimination of discrimination. The company is also responsible for regulating the ban on face recognition.

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Three of the four city council members expressed support for the ban. At a face recognition seminar in January, attended by representatives including civil rights groups, legislatures and business associations, Portland Mayor TedWheeler said that "only frontline communities are taken into account" to make Poland particularly willing to use these technologies.

Hardesty, the first African-American member of the Portland city council, replied more bluntly: "these days, you don't have any confidence in face recognition technology unless you're white."

Some lobbyists working for top technology companies have also expressed dissatisfaction with Portland's proposed ban on face recognition, which is likely to involve private companies for the first time.

In a January 2020 commentary from The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) said: "rather than a ban-first approach, Portland should conduct a small pilot to assess the possible impact of the technology on privacy in a variety of situations."

Members of the board of directors of ITIF, a think-tank in Washington, D.C., have been lobbying for companies such as Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. Shannon Kellogg, Amazon's vice president of public policy, is also a member of the ITIF board.

For the upcoming ban on private use of face recognition, not many details have been disclosed, and the corresponding draft has not been made public. It is a thorny problem to supervise whether an enterprise abides by the law. Hardesty suggested that the city government should fine enterprises that fail to comply with the regulations.

Face recognition technology has already been put into use in Portland. For example, after work, customers will shop at three JacksonsFood stores in the city, and all customers must first go through a face recognition system before entering the mall.

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Before opening the gate of the mall, the system will tell waiting customers: "Please look at the camera at the entrance." If a customer's face matches the blacklist in the mall database, the door will be closed to him.

Neither Jacksons Food nor BlueLine Software lobbied the Portland proposal, and BlueLine Software is the developer of the face recognition system. But local companies have expressed their opposition to the private use ban. Some companies have shown that face recognition is of great use in security and can also help their stores identify customers.

At a meeting in January, a representative of the Portland Business Alliance suggested that tight controls on face recognition might send a signal that Portland does not provide fertile ground for technology companies.

Mayor Wheeler replied that Portland is not opposed to technological development. On the contrary, he said, Portland is actively taking steps to protect marginalized citizens from possible harm, which is part of Portland's response to the "tech giants." and these tech giants "force local communities to use this technology in the absence of federal standards."

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"at a time when the epidemic is gradually improving and all aspects are beginning to be rebuilt, the city government should start to take resolute action," Hardesty said. "data in daily life may be collected and deliberately sold by willing people, but there is nothing you can do about it, at least we can dispel people's concerns."

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