Quote:
WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2012
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:36 p.m., in
Room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Al Franken,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Franken, Whitehouse, and Blumenthal.
Also present. Senator Sessions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. AL FRANKEN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF MINNESOTA
Chairman Franken. This hearing will be called to order.
Welcome to the fourth hearing of the Subcommittee on Privacy,
Technology, and the Law. Today's hearing will examine the use
of facial recognition technology by the Government and the
private sector and what that means for privacy and civil
liberties.
I want to be clear: There is nothing inherently right or
wrong with facial recognition technology. Just like any other
new and powerful technology, it is a tool that can be used for
great good. But if we do not stop and carefully consider the
way we use this technology, it could also be abused in ways
that could threaten basic aspects of our privacy and civil
liberties. I called this hearing so we can just start this
conversation.
I believe that we have a fundamental right to control our
private information, and biometric information is already among
the most sensitive of our private information, mainly because
it is both unique and permanent. You can change your password.
You can get a new credit card. But you cannot change your
fingerprint, and you cannot change your face--unless, I guess,
you go to a great deal of trouble.
Indeed, the dimensions of our faces are unique to each of
us--just like our fingerprints. And just like fingerprint
analysis, facial recognition technology allows others to
identify you with what is called a ``faceprint''--a unique file
describing your face.
But facial recognition creates acute privacy concerns that
fingerprints do not. Once someone has your fingerprint, they
can dust your house or your surroundings to figure out what you
have touched.
Once someone has your faceprint, they can get your name,
they can find your social networking account, and they can find
and track you in the street, in the stores that you visit, the
Government buildings you enter, and the photos your friends
post online. Your face is a conduit to an incredible amount of
information about you, and facial recognition technology can
allow others to access all of that information from a distance,
without your knowledge, and in about as much time as it takes
to snap a photo.
People think of facial recognition as something out of a
science fiction novel. In reality, facial recognition
technology is in broad use today. If you have a driver's
license, if you have a passport, if you are a member of a
social network, chances are good that you are part of a facial
recognition data base.
There are countless uses of this technology, and many of
them are innovative and quite useful. The State Department uses
facial recognition technology to identify and stop passport
fraud--preventing people from getting multiple passports under
different names. Using facial recognition technology, Sheriff
Larry Amerson of Calhoun County, Alabama, who is with us here
today, can make sure that a prisoner being released from the
Calhoun County jail is actually the same prisoner that is
supposed to be released. That is useful. Similarly, some of the
latest smartphones can be unlocked by the owner by just looking
at the phone and blinking.
But there are uses of this technology that should give us
pause.
In 2010, Facebook, the largest social network, began
signing up all of its then 800 million users in a program
called Tag Suggestions. Tag Suggestions made it easier to tag
close friends in photos, and that is a good thing.
But the feature did this by creating a unique faceprint for
every one of those friends. And in doing so, Facebook may have
created the world's largest privately held data base of
faceprints--without the explicit consent of its users. To date,
Tag Suggestions is an opt-out program. Unless you have taken
the time to turn it off, it may have already been used to
generate your faceprint.
Separately, last year, the FBI rolled out a Facial
Recognition Pilot program in Maryland, Michigan, and Hawaii
that will soon expand to three more States. This pilot lets
officers in the field take a photo of someone and compare it to
a Federal data base of criminal mug shots. The pilot can also
help ID a suspect in a photo from an actual crime. Already,
several other States are setting up their own facial
recognition systems independently of the FBI. These efforts
will catch criminals. In fact, they already have.
Now, many of you may be thinking that that is an excellent
thing, and I agree. But unless law enforcement facial
recognition programs are deployed in a very careful manner, I
fear that these gains could eventually come at a high cost to
our civil liberties.
I fear that the FBI pilot could be abused to not only
identify protesters at political events and rallies, but to
target them for selective jailing and prosecution, stifling
their First Amendment rights. Curiously enough, a lot of the
presentations on this technology by the Department of Justice
show it being used on people attending political events or
other public gatherings.
I also fear that without further protections, facial
recognition technology could be used on unsuspecting civilians
innocent of any crime, invading their privacy and exposing them
to potential false identifications....
