Your identity needs protecting. Congress must regulate facial recognition technology

Congress should take note when a technology giant recommends more regulation of its industry.

It isn’t often that a business leader asks for government involvement, but that is exactly what Microsoft President Brad Smith is doing.

Smith has some serious concerns about the potential for abuse of facial recognition technology.

In a recent blog post, he explained why federal lawmakers should form a bipartisan commission of experts to study the issue, and then suggests they rein it in.

This is significant advice.

Technology, as we all know, tends to move faster than society’s ability to grapple with its unintended consequences — and facial recognition is the latest hot new innovation.

It allows computers to recognize people’s faces and has been “advancing rapidly over the past decade,” Smith wrote. But he notes it “remains far from perfect.”

Particularly, he said studies have shown the technology is more accurate for white men than for white women, and for people with lighter complexions than for people of color.

Misidentification is a big concern considering law-enforcement agencies are starting to use the technology to find criminals, according to the Seattle Times.

The Times article noted that last May the American Civil Liberties Union criticized Amazon for selling its Rekogntion technology to government entities, saying it could violate people’s civil liberties.

While many people would prefer to forgo passwords and use their face to unlock their computers and smart phones, the emerging facial recognition technology also could eventually be used to track people everywhere they go.

And that’s where lawmakers need to step in and set limits on its use.

Smith asked his readers to imagine a “database of everyone who attended a political rally that constitutes the very essence of free speech. Imagine the stores of a shopping mall using facial recognition to share information with each other about each shelf that you browse and product you buy, without asking you first.”

More and more it seems people are trading their privacy for convenience. Without some government regulation over how technology is used, our personal lives will no longer remain personal.

And while remembering passwords is annoying, at least people can change them. That’s not the case with your face.

Smith wrote that the “competitive dynamics” between tech companies will allow governments to “keep purchasing and using technology in ways the public may find unacceptable” without common regulations in place.

He is right.

“Facial recognition is the technology of the moment, but it’s apparent that other new technologies will raise similar issues in the future. This makes it even more important that we use this moment to get the direction right,” he wrote.

It’s all well and good for tech leaders to impose rules on themselves, but if those rules aren’t uniform they do no good. That’s why the federal government must get involved.

Since technology moves amazingly fast and government moves achingly slow, lawmakers should take Smith’s suggestion to heart as soon as possible and start forming that expert commission.

This story was originally published July 20, 2018 at 12:58 PM.