Across the country, people are waking up to the dangers of facial recognition technology — and they’re taking action. In Massachusetts, municipalities are stepping up to stop this harmful surveillance technology: Somerville was the first community on the East Coast to ban government use of facial recognition technology, and most recently, Easthampton. Last year, our cities — Boston and Springfield — became the largest on the East Coast to ban face surveillance.
But Massachusetts has more work to do to protect all residents, visitors, and commuters from this invasive, biased technology. Current state law, which took effect on July 1, includes very limited regulations on facial recognition technology, addressing only how police use face recognition to search images and identify a person in a database. The law does not protect people from the most dangerous form of face surveillance: its use to track the movements of people in public places.
When our city councils debated this issue, we heard a range of concerns about face surveillance from constituents, but one stood out in particular: racial bias. As men of color who represent large communities of color, we were alarmed to learn that facial recognition is shockingly inaccurate when applied to people with darker skin. We are even more alarmed to see these inaccuracies borne out in reality. So far, multiple people have been falsely arrested based on faulty facial recognition scans — all of them Black men.
One of those men, Robert Williams, testified before Congress earlier this month. He was held for 30 hours by Detroit police, even after the officers realized they likely had the wrong man. Those officers also knew that they shouldn’t have sought a warrant for Mr. Williams based on a single facial recognition scan, but in the absence of strong regulations or disincentives, they did it anyway, and it’s unclear whether they will face any lasting consequences. To people of color in Massachusetts, that will sound familiar.
There is little to prevent the story of Mr. Williams from being repeated in our state. While the law that went into effect this month establishes some guardrails around police use of facial recognition, it stops short of a warrant requirement, and does not even require prosecutors to disclose to defendants when facial recognition is used to investigate or bring charges against them. What’s more, current law does nothing to prevent other government departments from acquiring and deploying face surveillance indiscriminately in public places like schools, parks, libraries and municipal buildings.
As city councilors in Boston and Springfield, we passed bans on face surveillance in our cities — in part because the state has failed to pass comprehensive regulations and safeguards.
Now, a new bill gives the legislature a chance to take the next step to regulate government use of facial recognition. Lawmakers should seize this opportunity, or the people of Massachusetts — especially people of color — will continue to rely on a growing patchwork of municipal bans to protect them from this dangerous and racially biased surveillance technology.
We’re proud that people can walk around Boston and Springfield without fear of being tracked or monitored by face surveillance technology — but all Bay Staters deserve that protection. Municipal bans currently offer protection to roughly one million Bay Staters, and more bans will likely follow — but a patchwork will not cover us all. The new bill would extend basic protections, blocking the government from using the technology to surveil people, requiring police to get a warrant before conducting a facial recognition search and providing key due process protections to ensure no one is ever subjected to a wrongful arrest because of faulty, biased technology.
Representing two of the seven Massachusetts municipalities that have taken matters into our own hands, we can say with confidence that local face surveillance bans and moratoriums have not caused the sky to fall. Make no mistake: People and communities are safer without facial recognition surveillance.
Communities are saying loud and clear that they do not want face surveillance. Faced with the threat of a dangerous, racially biased technology, and the absence of meaningful statewide regulations, our choice as city leaders was clear. Now, it’s time for Beacon Hill to take action.
Ricardo Arroyo is a city councilor representing District 5 in Boston. Justin Hurst is a city councilor-at-large in Springfield.
