“Smile you liars, you’re on county camera,” read the headline in last week’s Portland Press Herald. The article, detailing new facial recognition software being introduced today by the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, has since had its title tweaked to read: “Smile, you scofflaws, you’re on county camera.” While the switch from “liars” to “scofflaws” is subtle, it tellingly draws attention to one of the worst elements of this type of high-end surveillance technology: when you put the public under constant scrutiny, we’re all treated as if we’ve done something wrong. “Liar,” “scofflaw” – whatever word you want to use, it doesn’t jive well with the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing.
In the Press Herald article, our Legal Director Zach Heiden spoke about why the ACLU of Maine objects to this use of facial recognition software. “This technology is still in its infancy and at the current point it's notoriously unreliable," Zach said. “As a result, the ACLU has objected to the use and expanded use of facial recognition technology in the public sphere.” You can also watch our Executive Director Shenna Bellows speaking to the privacy concerns on local television.
The system being used by Cumberland County – which was purchased for $35,000 from an out-of-state company – kicks into action when a police officer uses their smartphone to snap a picture of a suspect. That photo is then turned into a numerical composite and compared against a vast database of roughly 50,000 images. Because the technology is so imprecise, it returns a long list of possible matches. (Comically, when demonstrated to the Press Herald reporter, a picture of a white female returned multiple matches that even included a black male.)
Perhaps scariest of all is that this technology could soon be spreading around Maine. Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association, says software like this is the “wave of the future” and that “any tool you can get to help you with your job as a police officer, particularly in the identification (of suspects), is good.” We would beg to differ with that assessment. “Any tool you can get” includes a lot of unreliable, insecure tools like this that don’t protect the public’s right to privacy. At least the government is being honest that facial recognition software has all sorts of flaws, but it’s not much consolation if they’re going to put it into use anyhow.
The philosophy of “innocent until proven guilty” shouldn’t be subject to advancements in technology. Neither should the Fourth Amendment's protection of our right to privacy.
