The relationship between the Police and the black community in the United States is, to say the least, conflictive. There have been several chapters in the country's history in which injustice and excessive violence by the authorities have overshadowed the rights of blacks. New technologies such as facial recognition make this situation even worse. At the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, protesters in New York were more exposed than those in other cities across the country. Now, a new Amnesty International study confirms the worst fears.
In the Big Apple, people living in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are the most exposed to video surveillance cameras. They are also the ones who, cameras aside, are at greater risk of police repression. Amnesty International's research investigates precisely this aspect and confirms that those who live in an area with a higher risk of being stopped by the Police are also more exposed to facial recognition technology.
“A new analysis in the context of the global Ban The Scan campaign has shown that the New York Police Department's (NYPD) mass surveillance operation particularly affects those who are already targeted for stopping and register in the five boroughs of New York City”.
Amnesty International
The New York Police and the Shadow of Discrimination
Queens, the Bronx or Brooklyn are some of the neighborhoods that have been investigated by the organization. In those I count, the higher the proportion of non-white people, the greater the concentration of cameras with facial recognition.
“Our analysis demonstrates that the NYPD's use of facial recognition technology contributes to reinforcing discriminatory policing against the city's minority communities,” said Matt Mahmoudi, researcher of Amnesty International on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights.
In total, information from more than 25,500 surveillance cameras in New York has been compiled to reach these conclusions. As a result, Amnesty International is seeking explanations from the Police Department to find out more about the use of facial recognition on the city's streets.
The organization has also presented a tool that makes it possible to discover which part of a possible walking route between two points in the city would be exposed to surveillance based on facial recognition technology. “It is a deliberate tactic to instil fear used by the New York police, which has no place in a free society and must be stopped immediately,” concludes Mahmoudi.
The mayor bets on facial recognition
Facial recognition is a technology that allows you to compare the images that appear on cameras with millions of faces in databases. Some of these databases are public registries, but also social networks, without the user's consent. China was the country that first implemented this technology in its cities, and was also the first to be in the crosshairs of human rights organizations for the violation of rights.
In a previous Amnesty International article, experts claimed that states are using facial recognition to intentionally target certain people or groups based on ethnicity, race or gender. “Without individualized reasonable suspicion of criminal acts”.
However, nothing indicates that the New York government wants to put a stop to the use of this technology. The mayor, Eric Adams, bets that facial recognition can help identify criminals. “If you're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever happens, they can see and identify who you are without violating people's rights,” Adams said in January. “ It will be used for research purposes ,” he said, according to Politico.
Study emerging technologies The New York Police have been using this technology for some time, specifically in at least 22,000 cases between 2016 and 2019. In this time, its use has led to the filing of several lawsuits against the authorities, in many cases for unjustified arrests. Of course, all Latinos or people from the black community.
Regardless of how artificial intelligence has been used so far, Eric Adams wants the technology to also be used to detect people carrying weapons. On the other hand, he has proposed replacing metal detectors in schools with a scanner to see if students carry weapons.
From the point of view of the mayor's office, the objective is to study emerging technologies to use them legally and make the streets safer. It states that tools that are biased against communities or genders will not be used. However, Amnesty International's research and other previous reports show the opposite. Several studies claim that facial recognition is less accurate at analyzing the faces of Asian or black people.
Other cities in the United States such as San Francisco and Seattle have banned this technology for this reason; and they argue the racist undertone of facial recognition, as well as a violation of privacy. But, in New York, the trend is completely opposite for now.
China and the dilemma of human rights
The dangers to freedom that may come from facial recognition have long been the subject of discussion. Especially since China opted for this technology to strengthen its state of control. In 2020, a report called ChinaFile brought to light that from 2010 to 2019, Asian government procurement increased by almost 1,900%. Almost the Half of all surveillance cameras in the world are owned by China.
As in the case of New York, several institutions and human rights organizations have denounced the behavior of the Chinese authorities regarding the abuse of this technology. But China is not willing to stop.
Recently, the Chinese company Tencent announced its intention to use facial recognition to control the time that minors play video games. To do this, the company uses this technology to identify the faces of minors who have managed accounts and control how many hours they spend playing. They will only allow you to play 14 hours in 14 days, that is, one hour a day. Minors who are of primary school age are exceeded, their session will be closed.
This is just the latest chapter in a story that has brought controversy since it began. The doubts (and some evidence) about human rights violations are too many. But that does not dissuade the authorities who seek other ways to have greater control over society.
