Regulation on surveillance camera and facial recognition technology(1/2)

This article is written by Mr. Yusuke Koizumi, Chief Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies（NEC Group）

Strong concern over automated facial recognition (AFR)

Due to recent improvement of accuracy of facial recognition technology (FRT), there are increasing usage cases of FRT to identify or authenticate the individuals in a variety of places such as airports, retail shops, shopping centers, hotels, fitness centers, transportation systems, libraries and offices.

 

Different from the cases where the individual is authenticated with his/ her consent in such cases as log-in to smart phones and personal computers, immigration control at airport and entrance control at amusement park, the facial recognition conducted for many and unspecified people on the public roads etc. provokes a discussion on human right issues such as privacy. In parallel with the increase of usage cases there are increase of regulations on FRT usage in USA and Europe.

 

In UK there are a number of trials performed by the Leicestershire Police, the Metropolitan Police Service and the South Wales Police that FRT is tested to automatically identify in real time persons of interest such as criminals among the audience in the specific events such as rock music concerts, street carnival and football games using face images of the audience and facial images of watch lists.

 

In private sectors there is also such case as a real estate company used automated facial recognition (AFR) technology to identify with surveillance camera pedestrians passing in the redevelopment area in front of Kings Cross stations using the watch list of missing persons etc. provided by the police.

 

In UK there are a number of concerns raised by privacy groups and commissioners from the points of transparency and validity. In July 2018 the Law Enforcement Facial Images and New Biometrics Oversight and Advisory Board was established to look at the development and use facial image storing and matching systems by police. In July 2019 University of Essex published the report to criticize the trials conducted by the Metropolitan Police Service. In August there was the first instance of lawsuit against the usage of AFR of the South Wales Police. The UK’s data protection authority (Information Commissioner's Office) has initiated the investigation on the usage case in private sectors.

 

In USA there are already some State laws to regulate the commercial usage of FRT. In 2019 the active trend has been seen in the federal, state and municipal level to create laws and regulations to regulate the usage of FRT. 


There would be a number of reasons behind this trend. These might be active lobbying activities by citizen groups (specially by American Civil Liberties Union) to stop the surveillance use of FRT, the demand by Microsoft for the creation of new laws to regulate face recognition, and the announcement of the results of study conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology that gender recognition rate is high for white-male, but, very low for colored-female.

 

In San Francisco of California State a new city regulation was established in May that city departments including the police are prohibited to use FRT, and similar regulation was enacted in Oakland of California and Somerville of Massachusetts.

 

In the next article the draft guidelines of EU will be reported.