AN ORDINANCE relating to facial recognition, prohibiting the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology by County administrative offices and executive departments, including the department of public safety; and adding a new chapter in K.C.C. Title 2.
Okay. Thank you so much. And we will move to item eight on today's agenda. This is an ordinance that would prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from using facial recognition technology. I understand that there is a technical striking amendment. We have Nick Bowman from Policy Staff to provide a staff report. Mr. Bowman, the line is yours. Morning council members, for the record. Nick Bowman, Council Central Staff. The materials for agenda item eight begin on page 18 of your packet. As the chair mentioned, proposed Ordinance 2020 10091 would prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from acquiring and using facial recognition technology or facial recognition information. Facial recognition technology or CRT is defined as any computer software or application which assists in identifying an individual based on the physical characteristics of the individual's face. Facial recognition information is defined as any data or information obtained or derived from facial recognition technology. Violations of the proposed ordinance would constitute an injury to which a person is subject to the violation may seek judicial release. To start, I'm going to provide some background on what our t is, how it is used, and the concerns it is raised is a category of biometric software generally defined as a method of identifying or confirming an individual's identity. Using their face. Facial recognition can be used to identify people in photos, videos or in real time. While specific methods vary depending on the system provider, FRC generally includes the following processes capture, which is the process of finding visual space and removing the face from a larger image analysis. The process of mapping an individual's facial features conversion, the process of taking the analyzed facial features and creating a standardized facial template or mathematical representation which can be compared to other facial templates housed in a reference database, often referred to as a gallery, and then identification or verification, which is the process of comparing a facial template against a gallery of other facial templates for an identification task. The facial recognition system is provided a probe image and attempts to match it with a biometric reference in a gallery for a various verification task. An individual already enrolled in a gallery presents their face or image. The system and the system that attempts to match the face of image with the claim template in the gallery and either verifies or rejects the face of revenge. An automatic automated facial recognition was developed in the 1960s but did not really become widespread until 2010, when computers became capable of training neural networks required to make facial recognition a standard feature. Today, facial recognition is used across the globe for a variety of purposes, from the relatively mundane, such as unlocking a smartphone or tagging a friend in a social media post to the highly sophisticated such as targeted advertising, law enforcement and surveillance. A Non-Exhaustive Non-Exhaustive list of efforts uses include accessing personal electronic devices and or secure locations. Social media, law enforcement, which includes such applications as collecting arresting mug shots and comparing them against local, state and federal databases. Querying mugshot databases to identify individuals in an image, verifying the identity of one of wanted criminals or those suspected of a crime, locating missing persons and or victims of trafficking. And there's also identity theft and fraud detection, streamline travel with biometric passports at border crossings and airports, event registration, individualized and target advertising and marketing and employee time and performance tracking. The rapid advancement and sophistication of theparty in the last several years has raised concerns primarily focused on the accuracy of the technology, demographic biases and encroachment on civil liberties. FRC has proven effective with relatively small populations in controlled environments for the verification of identity claims, where again, an image of an individual's face is matched to a preexisting image on file associated with a claimed identity. According to independent tests by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, or new study between 2014 and 2018. The failure rate for finding a match in a database of 12 million portrait photos fell from 4% to 2.2%. However, accuracy decreases when there is no standardized photo for comparison or when the comparison comes by a photo from an uncontrolled environment such as a face in the crowd image or a still from a live video feed. Everybody works best when a picture is head on and has no movement. Additionally, because faces change over time. Unlike fingerprints or DNA, the technology can trigger incorrect results by changing hairstyles, facial hair, body weight and the effects of aging. Research has also indicated that FRC may not be as accurate in reading the faces of certain demographic groups. FRC biases can occur when neural networks of the system are trained on dataset datasets of images which are not demographically balanced. When the system learns from a demographically uneven pool of images, the error rate for the demographic groups less represented in the dataset increases. Some research has found that these demographic biases may be the product of a geographic region. The effort to use developed. According to a 2011 and I and I study of FRC algorithms developed in Western countries and algorithms developed in East Asian countries. Western algorithms recognize Caucasian faces more accurately than East Asian faces, and East Asian algorithms recognize East Asian faces more actively than Caucasian faces. More recently, studies have shown that demographic biases persist despite the general improvement in FRC in the last several years. A 2018 study testing three commercial face analysis services found that datasets were overwhelmingly composed of lighter skin subjects. As a result, the study found that darker skinned females were the most misclassified group with error rates of up to 34.7% compared to the maximum error error rate of 0.8% for lighter skinned males. The use of FRC by governments and private enterprises wherein individuals may have their faces scanned and added to a system's dataset unknowingly and without consent, has raised concerns over the infringement of an individual's right to privacy and other civil liberties. Civil rights and privacy organizations have argued that individuals have an expectation of anonymity in public settings and that few are privy to their identity and personal information. They are used to erodes this expectation by allowing the user to identify an individual by their face and associate that individual with internet behavior or travel patterns or other personal information . Recent instances of FRC use by law enforcement agencies have been cited by organizations such as the ACLU and the Electronic Freedom Foundation as examples of the threat posed by efforts to civil liberties. In 2016, the ACLU of Northern California reported that during protests surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore Police Department ran social media photos through efforts to identify protesters and monitor them. Also in January of last year, the Detroit Police Department wrongly arrested a man named Robert Williams based after being falsely identified by the department's efforts system. Now, proponents of the technology point to instances where FRC has aided law enforcement in investigations and the apprehension of criminals. One says insincerity by proponents is the August 2019 arrest of Larry Griffin's, the second, who was arrested after being identified by a detective in the New York Police Department's face ID section on charges of placing fake bombs in Lower Manhattan subway station. More recently, federal court documents show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used FRC to assist in the identification of individuals who participated in the January six, 2021 riots at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Citing many of the concerns listed above. Several U.S. cities have banned municipal agencies from using FRC. As of November 20, 2013, cities have enacted some form of FRC ban, including San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Oregon and Jackson, Mississippi, among others. Okay. Moving now to the proposed ordinance, as I mentioned earlier, proposed ordinance, 2020 10091 would ban the acquisition and use of FTE by county administrative offices and executive departments. The proposed ordinance would also prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from issuing any permit or entering into any agreement which authorizes a third party to use facial recognition technology or obtain or access facial recognition information on behalf of the county. However, evidence relating to the investigation of a specific crime that may have come from FRC may be used by a county administrative office or executive department, so long as the evidence was not generated by or at the request of that county office or department and for the committee's benefits, county administrative offices and executive departments include all county agencies except for the prosecuting attorney's office and the courts. The proposed ordinance defines facial recognition technology as any computer software or application, which assists in identifying or verifying the identity of an individual based on the physical characteristics of the individual's face. Efforts. He does not include the analysis of facial features to grant access to an electronic device or the use of redacting software to protect the privacy of an individual depicted in a recording intended for release or disclosure. Facial recognition information is also defined as any data or information obtained or derived from facial recognition technology. The proposed ordinance would establish a process for account for county personnel who inadvertently or unintentionally use or access facial recognition information. This process would require county personnel to notify their direct supervisor that they received, used or gained access to facial recognition information and that they immediately delete the information subject to applicable laws. Any facial recognition information collected or derived in violation of the established ban would be considered unlawful to obtain. Violations of the established ban would constitute an injury to which a person subject to the violation may seek relief in court. And furthermore, a prevailing plaintiff in any such court proceeding would be entitled to award costs and reasonable attorney's fees. That concludes my report, Mr. Chair, except to say, as you mentioned earlier, there is an amendment amendment S1 makes a series of technical and formatting corrections to the body of the audience as recommended recommended by the code. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions for. Mr.. Bowman. Mr.. Council member. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I do have a couple of questions. Thank you, Nick, for the really outstanding report on this. Very thorough. I would appreciate it if you would describe to us how the ordinance before us differs from the legislation passed last year by the state legislature, and also how it differs from the bill passed by the Seattle City Council. Sure. The state law, which goes into effect on January 1st, 2021, requires that any state or local agency that wants to acquire, develop or use NRT must first of all say they do use different definitions. But for the committee's benefit, I'll just continue using the definitions that I've described. If they want to acquire developer use FRC, they must first give notice to the state or local authority that it intends to do so. That agency must then develop an accountability report for how the FRC will be used and its impact on privacy and civil liberties. Then that accountability report must be sent to the local authority who must make it publicly available. So in the county's case, a King County agency would need to notify the Council of its intent to use or develop FRC. And then we need to develop an accountability report and send to the council. And then the council will need to make that report available on its website. There are also in the state law. There are also prohibitions on the use of FRC by state and local government entities, as well as specific prohibitions on the use of FRC by law enforcement agencies. Under the state law, no government entity may use FRC to engage in ongoing surveillance, conduct real time or near time identification or or start persistent tracking. Unless a warrant has been obtained, exigent circumstances exist or a court or is detained for the sole purpose of locating or identifying a missing person or identifying a deceased person. For law enforcement agencies, they are prohibited from using the results of FRC as the sole basis to establish probable cause in a criminal investigation. However, results from FRC may be used in conjunction with other information lawfully obtained, and they are also prohibited from using FRC to identify an individual based on a sketch or manually produced image as to state law. Seattle Surveillance Ordinance Requires City Departments to prepare surveillance impact impact reports on all new and currently used technology that meets the ordinances definition of surveillance. The reports must include an in-depth review of privacy implications, especially relating to equity in community impact. And the reports must then be reviewed by the City Council, who then vote to approve or deny the use of the surveillance technology. So in both the Seattle and state laws, there is a review process of the proposed technology. And. Whereas, proposed ordinance in 091 before you would outright ban in county administrative offices and executive departments from using technology that meets the definition of FRC or using facial recognition information. That would be the primary differences. Thank you. And just to clarify, if we had this situation where there were a missing child, for example, perhaps in another state or another county in the state or whatever. Would the county then not be refraining from being able to use that and notice if we had reason to suspect that that child was being held here? Know that we will not it would not be prohibited that. It would not. Be I would not be prohibited from using any help in the identification and location of that missing child. And to. See no further questions. I'd like to actually invite Councilmember Caldwell's, if she would like, as prime sponsor, to make any remarks before we take questions and more general questions and conversation from colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I would like to make a few, and I hope you'll indulge me. I think we can time. I'd like to speak for several minutes because that's some, I think some very informative material. First of all, as was mentioned by NEC, this ordinance would ban the use of facial recognition and code for King County Sheriff's Office and other county agencies. And unless I'm mistaken, I do not believe we have heard from the sheriff's office opposing this legislation. And as you heard, a ban would not affect the private sector. It is strictly applicable to county government. The what really concerns me here, get down to the bottom line here. Without the rapid advancement and sophistication of facial recognition technology, and I'll just refer to this effort to in the last several years has raised concerns over issues. It certainly raised concerns on my part. And these concerns focused on the accuracy or lack of accuracy of the technology, demographic biases and encroachment on civil liberties. But also, I'm concerned about what is being done with the data. Have you ever thought about this when you got into a store and seen a camera tracking your movements while you're in that store, including your face without your consent? Now, this likely in almost all cases, is harmless, but the technology now exists that can harvest those video feeds and run them against photo databases and social media posts . And now, in our Zoom culture, we have yet another avenue for our spaces to be captured digitally. But where does it stop? And it can be taken place in so many different modes. Well, not an example of facial recognition. One thing that I have really hated that involves technology and tracking has been when I've been continually exposed to ads interrupting my trying to read a news article online. But what really bothered me a couple of years ago was when I found out that these ads are tailored for me based on my preferences being tracked. So if you are reading the same article online, you're going to be interrupted by ads, but they'll be different ads based on a new contract and your priorities. So where does all of this lead? What happens when the technology screws up, which it does. And this identifies an individual, particularly when there can be dire consequences and effects for that person. And we've heard how racial bias is so prevalent within this technology. And 2018 study, and I think Nick referred to this, showed that darker skinned females were the most misclassified group with the error rates of up to almost 35% compared to the maximum error rate found of 0.8% for lighter skinned males. And multiple studies have demonstrated that it's up to 100 times more likely to identify black or Asian faces compared with white faces. And black women in particular, they are misidentified at significantly higher rates than other demographics, and the technology is even less reliable, according to research that's been done when identifying transgender individuals and entirely inaccurate when used on non-binary people. Now you've heard the harrowing stories about a lot of people. One is Robert Julian BAUCHER Williams, who went to jail for 30 hours after the Detroit police arrested him in front of his wife and children. Think about Nigella Parkes was jailed in New Jersey for ten days and spent over $5,000 in legal fees to defend himself. Michael Oliver lost his job and car while being held in a Detroit jail for three days on a felony larceny charge. Now, these three black men were wrongfully arrested due to false facial recognition matches for crimes they did not commit. Robert Julian boy, Chuck Williams is now suing the city of. For damages. So for me, government agencies should not be allowed to display known racist, anti-black facial recognition technology in communities that are already, I believe, over surveilled and overpoliced. Now, we could argue that facial recognition can be beneficial, and it probably can be, but we have to really find the right balance here. And I think the evidence shows that it remains unclear whether facial recognition technology has contributed to the arrest or prosecution of riot participants. Even at the January six capitol, insurgents. We just know that there are a lot of issues that are continuing here where there are mistakes made many times grievous, many times life threatening or even deadly. So I think we just need to take this situation. We have in place a ban on this, and we can always remove that ban through future legislation if we know at that time that privacy concerns the incorrect charges that can be made. And civil rights, civil liberties concerns are fully addressed and there's no reason anymore. But I'm sorry. I'm just too concerned about all that can go wrong with what we have now. And that's why I've offered this legislation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. Thank you, colleagues, for the questions conversation. Mr. Chair. Council member done. I for some reason I thought this was on for discussion purposes. Are we planning on voting on it right now? Checkpoint This is this is the first time it's been on our agenda. My intent would be to have a discussion today and probably take action at our next meeting. Okay. Thank you. I want to make sure people have an opportunity to raise issues, concerns, support, thoughts. In this discussion, Lala Kent remembers a whole lot. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Nick, thank you earlier for distinguishing the legislation from the state and city level legislation. The explanations felt a little bit itemized to me. Is there a way for you to kind of give a more high level couple sentence difference between what the state is doing and what the county is doing? You know, for example, ours is more restrictive than the states are. Ours has different requirements that just along those lines, because in my head, I have one list of what this one does and another list of what the other one does without really kind of. Summarizing it all. Absolutely. Council members. So in the highest possible level, the state law and the city of Seattle's ordinance allowed for the potential use of R. Should the local approval that they provide. Both of them provide transparency and public notice that this technology may be used by a city, a city or State Department or local agency , whereas the counties is far more restrictive. And just in just saying that, you may not use this technology. Thank you. Lambert Council member LAMBERT Thank you. I have a couple of quick questions. Earlier, you talked about sketched images not being included. Could you explain to me what that means. So that as as mentioned in the earlier background, the technologies are more accurate when you have a standardized straight a picture. And so the state law prohibits any law enforcement agency from using SRT that uses the basis of deface attempt to match from a sketch. So essentially that you must have an actual photo of the person you're attempting to identify. Okay. So, you know, if you're a victim of a crime and you go in and they make a photo montage, kind of for you to say that that's what it looks like, you know, and then they could run it through our teeth to be able to see, you know, which people might be likely to look like that to narrow it down. We wouldn't be able to do that because the whole thing is banned. Under the state law. You would not be able to a law enforcement agency would not be able to do that once it goes into effect on July 1st of this year. So I agree with Council member Cole Wells on the idea that I'm very concerned about how much data is out there. I too have gotten specialized ads on a product about six months ago that you only buy like once a year. And I have been deluged with that same thing and it's driving me crazy. So is there any date by which the state law or any other some of this data says you must delete all this data within five years or anything like that. Is there any final date of of that? Some cities have taken the approach of banning or restricting the use of private enterprises and using FRC. But the Washington state law and this county ordinance does not. Okay. And my last question is this. Where in the in the Bill Digest today does it show the information on the state? I didn't see where that was all written out. As I did not include as there are quite a difference in as I mentioned earlier on, what was I did not include a background on the state law, but I'm happy to provide you a summary if you would like that online. Yeah, I think following a councilmember there, my Zala, I would like to see a side by side of the two. And then in the report on page 18 of this, it talks about data up to 2010. So I'm wondering from 2010 to 2021 what the data changes were. So if you could get that or at least tell me why we're using over a decade old tech data. So that that that refers to. While the facial recognition technology has been around since the 1960s, it only became prevalent in 2010 when computers became powerful enough to manage the massive galleries that the systems required to do this sort of machine learning to make the technology work. Okay. So none of the data is matched on that. The data that you gave us about the 34% and the point 2%, that was all the data based on data from 2021. That's based on from a 2018. Nice study. Okay. And there's nothing more recent than that. I do not. Not that I have reviewed in this research now. So my my concern that I'd like to see in our next briefing is. What will this do if we decide to be different from the state and the state wants to collect data as being the largest state county? What will that do to being able to really collect good data? Because I think, as Councilmember Crowell says, we really need to know more about all of this data, not just facial recognition, but lots of data collected on us and our analytics and our buying habits and how we can protect ourselves and our constituents from lots of information floating around forever. So if you could talk a little bit about that, what the comparisons will be, what impact as being different from the state will have. I'll be wonderful. Thank you. I want to make sure that we're not leaving anybody with the impression that this software, a ban on facial recognition technology, would address tailored ads to individuals that I believe was used as an example of deep reach, perhaps overreach by technology, of analyzing the individual person's activities, as some would compare this software to doing as well. But this banning facial recognition technology would not affect the current use of ads in social media streams. And so I want to make be clear about that. And the audience before us, if I'm not mistaken, would only affect King County government entities, not any private use or other entities within the counties boundaries. And also clarify, if I can, Mr. Bowman, that the state legislation putting some strong sideboards and recognitions of civil liberty and other concerns when it goes into effect the first in July is applies to King County government entities, the very entities that this legislation would affect. Correct. So both of those states and this ordinance only deal with government entities. There is nothing related to private companies and how they use facial recognition technology or tracking across advertising and marketing. And there there really is just sideboards primarily related to law enforcement coming down from the state law and also transparency and review from state law to local governments. Which is certainly a avenue and quarter that as Councilmember Caldwell's introduction documents have is concerning in our community when we have the power of law enforcement to our image, our obligation to make sure that we're using it justly and well in it and not in equitably. So I certainly recognize the wanting to make sure that the technology, if it were to be used, is used well and not. In error. Mr. Chair. Council member Lambert. Thank you. Would you just check? Does the state law require, as part of the work an agency needs to make public before using SRT? They must define what the retention period is and the date of the recent process. So I believe that that is in the state law. So if you could check and make sure that we have that accurate, that would be great. I'm sorry, sir. Could you repeat that one more time? Are you saying so? How long in the accountability records the agency must define how long they intend to retain that data? Yes, that's correct. It is correct. Okay. If they intend to use that type of technology, they must include in the accountability report how long they intend to hold on to that that. Excellent. Thank you for the clarification. Further questions. Conversation Council member Belge. You're on mute. There was somebody. Thank you. I was listening carefully to Councilmember Caldwell's remarks in support of the legislation, and it's a very compelling case and the public testimony. It's a very compelling case. When you have technology that is has been shown to have these kinds of impacts and then the risk of rolling it out in ways that could cause harm to our constituents and that that cannot be undone. And so I think it's a very compelling case. I want to ask if the sponsor would would take a question. Yes. What I if you could just explain, because this issue of sort of the state went through a process to come up with a piece of legislation . There was a great deal of work that went into that, as my understanding in your thinking. What is the what is the the justification for us? Like, why is the state law not sufficient to meet the need that you have so compellingly identified? Thank you very much for the question. For me, it really comes down to protection of civil liberties. And I think there's just too much evidence currently that the potential for harm to individuals is so strong that it would be preferable to ban the use of this technology. I've looked at a lot of the at least research summaries, some coming from M.I.T., computer science researchers, employees of technology companies, and then some are comments, scholars and even corporate stakeholders that facial recognition use by governments. We're not talking about private entities here, just has too much potential harm that I don't want it to be used by our government. Now, I said earlier that maybe in the future it could be refined so much that we could we could amend action here. But I also think that there is a potential for making the problem worse if the facial recognition systems were to become totally accurate. How much surveillance power by a government do we need? Do we really need to track people by their race? Do we need really to profile and monitor people based on really secret algorithms? And do we really need to create databases that can be exploited by ICE in our immigration systems and other government agencies? I'm very concerned about the direction that we're going in, and I believe that we, as the current government have a we should have a policy to lead with racial equity as the driving force for how we develop laws and priorities. That's what we're about. But this is an ordinance that I think really would put equity into action. The technology is out there that is just too potentially dangerous, I believe. And it is our most vulnerable and already marginalized populations that are suffering disproportionality from its application. Now. So I feel very strongly about this. And I, I think it's very appropriate for our county to take this step and impose the ban. If something changes, we can undo that. But I'm concerned with all that's the momentum that's going forward and it seems to be so quickly going forward. How much do our citizens want to be tracked by government? And. Especially when there's such a high mistake rate for darker skinned people, especially darker skinned women. And. Thank you. Thank you for answering that question, Councilman, because I appreciate it. And I'm also moved by the fact that we're watching kind of it in real time, a terrifying experiment and the the hyper hyper surveillance of an entire population of people in another part of the world. And I'm not going to get into that right here, but I think sort of placing guardrails around the technology here makes it less likely that we will end up in that kind of an extreme situation, like when you see persecution in other parts of the world. So I thank you for that explanation. It's helpful. Thank you. Further discussion. Thank you so much. Colleagues will look forward to taking on this legislation and our end of items on our agenda today. Madam Clerk, did anybody miss any votes today?