Civil Rights Commission Pans Face Recognition Technology

In its recent report, Civil Rights Implications of Face Recognition Technology (FRT), the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights identified serious problems with the federal government’s use of face recognition technology, and in doing so recognized...

Germany Rushes to Expand Biometric Surveillance

Germany is a leader in privacy and data protection, with many Germans being particularly sensitive to the processing of their personal data – owing to the country’s totalitarian history and the role of surveillance in both Nazi Germany and East...

Weak "Guardrails" on Police Face Recognition Use Make Things Worse

Police use of face recognition technology (FRT) poses a particularly massive risk to our civil liberties, particularly for Black men and women and other marginalized communities. That's why EFF supports a ban on government FRT use. Half-measures...

Detroit Takes Important Step in Curbing the Harms of Face Recognition Technology

In a first-of-its-kind agreement, the Detroit Police Department recently agreed to adopt strict limits on its officers’ use of face recognition technology as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a victim of this faulty technology. Robert...

EFF Submits Comments on FRT to Commission on Civil Rights

Because our faces are often exposed and, unlike passwords or pin numbers, cannot be remade, governments and businesses, often working in partnership, are increasingly using our faces to track our whereabouts, activities, and associations. This is...

Podcast Episode: About Face (Recognition)

Is your face truly your own, or is it a commodity to be sold, a weapon to be used against you? A company called Clearview AI has scraped the internet to gather (without consent) 30 billion images to support a tool that lets users identify people...

FTC’s Rite Aid Ruling Rightly Renews Scrutiny of Face Recognition

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced action against the pharmacy chain Rite Aid for its use of face recognition technology in hundreds of stores. The regulator found that Rite Aid deployed a massive, error-riddled surveillance...

GAO Report Shows the Government Uses Face Recognition with No Accountability, Transparency, or Training

Federal agents are using face recognition software without training, policies, or oversight, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The government watchdog issued yet another report this month about the dangerously inadequate and...

The State of Chihuahua Is Building a 20-Story Tower in Ciudad Juarez to Surveil 13 Cities–and Texas Will Also Be Watching

Chihuahua state officials and a notorious Mexican security contractor broke ground last summer on the Torre Centinela (Sentinel Tower), an ominous, 20-story high-rise in downtown Ciudad Juarez that will serve as the central node of a new...

Victory! New Jersey Court Rules Police Must Give Defendant the Facial Recognition Algorithms Used to Identify Him

In a victory for transparency in police use of facial recognition, a New Jersey appellate court today ruled that state prosecutors—who charged a man for armed robbery after the technology showed he was a “possible match” for the suspect—must turn...

Stop This Dangerous Bill That Would Normalize Face Surveillance in California

Californians: It's time to speak out against government use of face surveillance. While several California cities have banned government use of face recognition technology, state lawmakers haven't taken the same approach. A new bill this session,...

Enough is Enough. Tell Congress to Ban Federal Use of Face Recognition

Cities and counties across the country have banned government use of face surveillance technology, and many more are weighing proposals to do so. From Boston to San Francisco, Jackson, Mississippi to Minneapolis, elected officials and activists...

Resisting the Menace of Face Recognition

Face recognition technology is a special menace to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. Our faces are unique identifiers, and most of us expose them everywhere we go. And unlike our passwords and identification...

Face Recognition Isn’t Just Face Identification and Verification: It’s Also Photo Clustering, Race Analysis, Real-time Tracking, and More

Governments and corporations are tracking how we go about our lives with a unique marker that most of us cannot hide or change: our own faces. Across the country, communities are pushing back with laws that restrain this dangerous technology. In...

Face Recognition Technology: Commonly Used Terms

As face recognition technology evolves at a dizzying speed, new uses and terminologies seem to develop daily. On this page, we attempt to define and disambiguate some of the most commonly used terms. For more information on government use of face...

Patrick Breyer (@echo_pbreyer@chaos.social)

Attached: 1 image 🇬🇧Historical moment: EU Parliament calls for a full ban of dystopian #BiometricMassSurveillance and #FaceSurveillance in Europe! Implement the ban now, @brandobenifei@twitter.com @DeirdreCluneMEP@twitter.com...

Victory! Lawsuit Proceeds Against Clearview’s Face Surveillance

Face surveillance is a growing menace to racial justice, privacy, and free speech. So EFF supports laws that ban government use of this dangerous technology, and laws requiring corporations to get written opt-in consent from a person before...

ACLU Advocate Reining in Government Use of Face Surveillance, Champion of Privacy Rights Research, and Data Security Trainer Protecting Black Communities Named Recipients of EFF’s Pioneer Award

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce that Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, Pam Dixon, executive director and founder of World Privacy Forum, and...

Victory! Biden Administration Rescinds Dangerous DHS Proposed Rule to Expand Biometrics Collection

Marking a big win for the privacy and civil liberties of immigrant communities, the Biden Administration recently rescinded a Trump-era proposed rule that would have massively expanded the collection of biometrics from people applying for an...