ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 28, 2023) – Yesterday, New York State Education Department Commissioner Betty A. Rosa issued an order prohibiting schools in the state from purchasing or utilizing facial recognition technology. The order will not only help protect the privacy of students and school staff in New York, but it will also hinder one aspect of the federal surveillance state.
In 2020, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill placing a temporary moratorium on facial recognition technology in the stateโs schools through July 2022. The law also established a commission to study whether biometric technology is appropriate for use in New York schools, and if so, what kind of restrictions should be placed on their use.
The Tenth Amendment Center is part ofย a coalition of more than 40 organizationsย that pushed for the passage of this bill. That coalition put significant pressure on Cuomo to enact the legislation.
The Office of Information Technology Services released the biometrics report in August. According to a press release, Rosa issued the ruling banning facial recognition in all New York public and nonpublic elementary and secondary schools after considering the recommendations in the report.
“She concluded that serious concerns surrounding the use of facial recognition technology do not outweigh its claimed benefits.”
The order allows schools to use other biometric-identifying technology “so long as they consider the technologyโs privacy implications, impact on civil rights, effectiveness, and parental input.”
New York ACLU Education Policy Center Deputy Director Stephanie Cole praised the New York Department of Education for standing up for the privacy and civil rights of New Yorkโs students.
โSchools should be safe places to learn and grow, not spaces where they are constantly scanned and monitored โ with their most sensitive information at risk.ย While we remain concerned about any use of biometric identifying technology in schools, weโre gratified that the state has affirmed that facial recognition has no place in New Yorkโs classrooms. We strongly urge the rest of the country to follow our lead.โ
The new order takes the first step toward limiting biometric surveillance and facial recognition in New York by halting its use in schools and creating a process for further limits in the future.
It will also hinder a federal program to create a nationwide facial recognition surveillance database.
IMPACT ON FEDERAL PROGRAMS
Aย 2019 report revealedย that the federal government has turned state driverโs license photos into a giant facial recognition database, putting virtually every driver in America in a perpetual electronic police lineup. The revelations generated widespread outrage, but the story wasnโt new. The federal government has been developingย a massive facial recognition systemย for years.
The FBIย rolled out a nationwide facial recognition programย in the fall of 2014, with the goal of building a giant biometric database with pictures provided by the states and corporate friends.
In 2016, the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law released โThe Perpetual Lineup,โ a massive report on law enforcement use of facial recognition technology in the U.S. You can read the complete report atย perpetuallineup.org. The organization conducted a year-long investigation and collected more than 15,000 pages of documents through more than 100 public records requests. The report paints a disturbing picture of intense cooperation between the federal government, and state and local law enforcement to develop a massive facial recognition database.
โFace recognition is a powerful technology that requires strict oversight. But those controls, by and large, donโt exist today,โ report co-authorย Clare Garvie said. โWith only a few exceptions, there are no laws governing police use of the technology, no standards ensuring its accuracy, and no systems checking for bias. Itโs a wild west.โ
Despite the outrage generated by these reports, Congress has done nothing to roll back this facial recognition program.
There areย many technical and legal problemsย with facial recognition, including significant concerns about the accuracy of the technology, particularly when reading the facial features of minority populations. During a test run by the ACLU of Northern California,ย facial recognition misidentified 26 members of the California legislatureย as people in a database of arrest photos.
With facial recognition technology, police and other government officials have the capability to track individuals in real time. These systems allow law enforcement agents to use video cameras and continually scan everybody who walks by. According to the report, several major police departments have expressed an interest in this type of real-time tracking. Documents revealed agencies in at least five major cities, including Los Angeles, either claimed to run real-time face recognition off of street cameras, bought technology with the capability, or expressed written interest in buying it.
In all likelihood, the federal government heavily involves itself in helping state and local agencies obtain this technology. The feds provide grant money to local law enforcement agencies for a vast array of surveillance gear, including ALPRs, stingray devices and drones. The federal government essentially encourages and funds a giant nationwide surveillance net and then taps into the information via fusion centers and the Information Sharing Environment (ISE).
Fusion centers were sold as a tool to combat terrorism, but that is not how they are being used. The ACLU pointed to aย bipartisan congressional reportย to demonstrate the true nature of government fusion centers: โThey havenโt contributed anything meaningful to counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they have largely served as police surveillance and information sharing nodes for law enforcement efforts targeting the frequent subjects of police attention: Black and brown people, immigrants, dissidents, and the poor.โ
Fusion centers operate within the broader ISE. According toย its website, the ISE โprovides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigatorsโฆhave mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.โ In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant.ย Known ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence which oversees 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. ISE utilizes these partnerships to collect and share data on the millions of unwitting people they track.
Reports that the Berkeley Police Department in cooperation with a federal fusion center deployed camerasย equipped to surveil a โfree speechโ rally and Antifa counterprotests provided the first solid link between the federal government and local authorities in facial recognition surveillance.
In a nutshell, without state and local cooperation, the feds have a much more difficult time gathering information. The passage of state laws and local ordinances banning and limiting facial recognition eliminates one avenue for gathering facial recognition data. Simply put, data that doesnโt exist cannot be entered into federal databases.
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