Eight Democratic lawmakers pressed the Housing and Urban Development Department Wednesday to address concerns and review policies on the use of facial recognition in federally assisted housing facilities.
In a letter penned to HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Cory Booker, D-N.J., Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Kamala D. Harris, D-Calif., and Reps. Yvette D. Clarke, D-N.Y., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., question the scope of facial recognition deployments across federally assisted housing properties and how the agency ensures residents’ sensitive biometric data is protected.
“All Americans, including those who live in public and other federally assisted housing communities, have fundamental privacy and civil liberty rights,” the legislators wrote. Recent media reports indicate that public housing authorities across America are implementing facial recognition technology, as the lawmakers put it, “ostensibly to deter crime and improve resident safety.” In New York City, they note, public housing owners have installed face-reading tech without residents’ consent. And in Detroit, after upgrading security cameras to include facial recognition tech, the public housing authority’s systems were made available to the police department as part of a city-wide effort to fight crime.
The lawmakers also highlight recent reports that demonstrate how facial recognition technology still misidentifies many people—particularly non-cisgender individuals, women, and people of color. Sharing the data with law enforcement, they said, can further exacerbate the vulnerabilities those communities presently face.
“[HUD] is responsible for creating and ensuring discrimination-free practices in all communities. Howev ..
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