EYES ON TECH
#Eyes On Tech, our latest campaign designed to break down the common misconceptions around facial recognition technology (FRT) and empower our community with the tools they need to fight back. Let’s get started.
Video created by Zoe Soriano
What is facial recognition anyway?
Facial recognition is always tracking us, whether you’re shopping, banking, or just hanging out with your friends. This is all happening without our knowledge and to make huge profits.
Video created by Zoe Soriano
The harms of facial recognition tech
Although facial recognition technology is only a few decades old, its surveillance roots run deep going back to a long history of our communities being tracked, surveilled, and criminalized.
In the hands of law enforcement, this unreliable technology can have dire consequences.
We fight for freedom against mass surveillance, criminalization, and the over-policing of our neighborhoods. Activists in our communities have a right to political expression and freedom of speech without an invasion of their rights and a threat to their safety.
Abroad & At Home: FRT & BigTech Are Used to Restrict Our Rights.
Constant surveillance is dehumanizing and creates a culture of fear, often deliberately. The treatment of black and brown communities as criminals chills free speech and inhibits participation in public life.
Freedom of Movement
Borders have become incubators and testing grounds for new technologies of violence. From Gaza to the US/Mexico Border, tech companies rake in millions through contracts from the government. Since 2014, the American government has awarded the Israeli tech company Elbit systems upwards of 170 million dollars in contracts to build a series of surveillance towers along the border.
The Israeli government uses FRT to entrench their apartheid system. They use this tech to track Palestinians and restrict their passage through military checkpoints in Hebron and East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. This tech affects whether or not Palestinians have access to basic goods and services, which are often located past the checkpoints.
CBP increasingly automates the asylum process, making FRT the primary determinant in whether asylum seekers are allowed to enter the U.S.
As a pilot project for its broader Biometric Exit program, the U.S. introduced the Vehicle Face System in Arizona and Texas to collect images of drivers’ and passengers’ faces leaving the US in 2018. Previous pilots of the program included photos of “people leaving work, picking up children from school, and carrying out other daily routines.” By tracking cars traveling to and from Mexico, they tested the accuracy of biometric matching capabilities of their tech against the images they had already collected and sharpened the capability of the cameras to capture faces through windshields.
The U.S. Govt. recently mandated that migrants without passports submit to facial recognition technology for domestic flights. This policy has already led groups to believe they were being turned away from the airport, raising concerns over the financial burden this poses. This has already led to a group of migrants from a Texas shelter being turned away from the airport.
Freedom of Dissent
With the wave of Pro-Palestine mobilization across the country, we’ve seen a nationwide uptick in the surveillance of protestors. Since October of 2023, for example, NYPD used drones to monitor and make 239 arrests at Pro-Palestine protests.
In 2021, CBP stationed one of its surveillance towers in San Diego to monitor political opposition to the building of prototypes for the physical border wall, citing the “emerging threat of demonstrations.”
Research from Amnesty International reveals that FRT surveillance constitutes a deliberate strategy by Israeli authorities to foster a hostile and oppressive atmosphere for Palestinians, aimed at chilling free speech, organizing efforts, and community gatherings.
Detroit’s Project Green Light features cameras with FRT capabilities at more than 500 public locations, all under the guise of keeping people safe. From reproductive health centers to clinics providing youth specific care or addiction treatment, these cameras subject everyone within range to surveillance. As of late August in 2023, PGL surveillance has led to at least three false arrests.
For far too long, private tech companies have avoided being under public scrutiny for their complicity in building and enhancing the carceral system in this country.
Since our inception, we’ve been paying close attention to the private tech companies that involve themselves with law enforcement at the cost of our rights. We’re answering the calls from the activists who fight for their communities.
Inspired by the same wave of resistance that led to the Amazon Workers' protests against the construction and deployment of facial recognition technology, we began this fight by joining forces with Mijente, Immigrant Defense Project, and ACLU Northern California, to support activists in bringing the fight from the streets and into the courtroom against surveillance that is fueling incarceration, detentions, and deportations.
As these private tech companies rake in millions by supplying law enforcement with mass surveillance technology, we’re taking on companies like Clearview AI.
Our battle against facial recognition companies like Clearview AI is not only about fighting the criminalization of Black and Brown communities but exposing them for what they have become: a revolving back door for police and ICE.
We’re Fighting Back.
Video created by Cowboy Bear Ninja
What and who’s behind Clearview?
Clearview AI is a controversial facial recognition software company founded in 2017 by Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz. According to documents obtained by Huffpost, Ton-That and several people who have worked for the company have had “deep, longstanding ties to far-right extremists.”
Clearview gives law enforcement access to 30+ billion images of people’s faces in its database and Clearview claims they are on track to grow to 100 billion images by this year—equal to about 14 photos for each person on Earth.
Without our knowledge or consent, Clearview obtains the photos in its database primarily by scraping our photos from across the internet, including from sites like LinkedIn, Venmo, and Twitter. The company mass extraction of our identities is the lifeblood of its commercial success.
Whether communities and local officials are aware of it or not, the company has sold its invasive surveillance technology to over 3,100 federal and local law enforcement agencies – including ICE, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.
In Europe and Australia, Clearview has been repeatedly fined millions of dollars for breaches of privacy. In 2022, Clearview’s violation of privacy rights in the US prompted the courts to ban the company from selling its services to most US companies and to any entity in Illinois for five years.
Major tech companies such as Google, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook have already sent cease and desist letters to Clearview for their shady scraping practices. Cities, such as Alameda and Portland, have also taken the steps they feel necessary in order to protect people’s privacy.
Despite the fallout from its conduct, Clearview has indicated its desire to expand its customer base in the US beyond law enforcement, signaling a future where nearly every aspect of our everyday lives is threatened by the harms of facial recognition surveillance. Clearview has stated that it is on track to have enough images to ensure that “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable” by its facial recognition system.
Local law enforcement around the country continue to adopt Clearview AI and other facial recognition tech. Like Clearview, these cities and departments operate without transparency to the public; Clearview AI’s behavior is egregious and it feeds into a larger problem of law enforcement’s use of surveillance technology.
Facial recognition technology (FRT) is invasive, expansive, and unregulated. Law enforcement have used this technology to target protesters and activists. This technology chills free speech and political freedom, especially against those fighting for racial justice. Examples of it being used against those protesting police violence include:
These are only a handful of the known cases of law enforcement using this technology to identify protestors. The government and the police must be stopped from using this technology to target, retaliate, and intimidate before this technology continues to expand and entangle itself further. FRT can often be inaccurate for people of color.
This technology has harmed the lives of Black men and has had chilling effects on our political freedom as activists fear retaliation and prosecution for speaking up. In the cases of the individuals below, police reliance on facial recognition tech has led to mistaken arrests and life-altering experiences for those impacted. However, this technology is extremely unregulated, thus, the cases of false identification often go unreported and we estimate that there are many others impacted.
Six federal agencies, including the FBI, used facial recognition on images from the 2020 George Floyd protests. That same year, Pittsburgh police reportedly accessed Clearview AI during Black Lives Matter protests, in some cases in violation of a city law.
In 2020 law enforcement in Miami, NYC, Philadelphia, and Columbia, SC used facial recognition software to identify, track, or arrest protesters. The NYPD used this tech to track down a Black Lives Matter activist to his home.
Back in 2015, facial recognition technology was used to track and arrest people protesting the police’s murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.
“How many people are sitting in jail now for something they didn’t do because of facial recognition and law enforcement agencies not doing their due diligence?”
- Carronne Sawyer, wife of Alonzo Sawyer
SOLUTIONS & DEMANDS
Currently, there are no federal regulations to rein in facial recognition and law enforcement’s use of it. Resources and funding continue to be funneled from communities into surveillance technology and expanding the digital dragnet. Policymakers at all levels must put the brakes on and end the abusive, racist use of surveillance technology, and shut down its devastating connection to criminalization, detention, and deportation.
We support policies that:
Ban facial recognition from being used by law enforcement
Terminate law enforcement contracts with facial recognition companies like Clearview AI
Halt future purchasing, including grants, that incentivize the acquisition of this tech
Restrict the collection of our faces without consent
The expansion of these systems has created massive profits for companies who contract with governments at all levels to push criminalization agendas.
Resources
Video created by Cowboy Bear Ninja
GET INVOLVED:
Police willfully ignore the evidence that shows facial recognition tech is dangerous. It’s time to turn up the pressure to end mass surveillance. Interested in getting involved?
Check out Mijente’s No Tech For ICE Campaign
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