Facial Recognition Code Talks at Crossroads After Break
Facial recognition code of conduct talks are set to resume in early October and stakeholders are hoping the extended break since late July will help reinvigorate the NTIA-backed group that faced some stagnation and setbacks in its last meeting, participants told us this week. The group is eyeing dates around Oct. 2, we're told. But because of some entrenched disagreements -- over the scope of the talks and the definitions of privacy, anonymity and discrimination -- the restart is unlikely to lead to a code of conduct any time soon, observers said.
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"It’s been, and continues to be, a really difficult process where you feel like you're going over and over the same things and you can’t even get agreement on very basic things,” said Susan Grant, director-consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America. “There is a lot of spinning going on,” said Jim Jasinski, senior vice president at facial recognition company Digital Signal Corporation and representative for the International Biometrics Industry Association (IBIA). “I think in some ways people talk past each other."
The group faced a setback at its last meeting in July as discussions stalled over broad issues such as discrimination and interest-based advertising, said NetChoice Policy Counsel Carl Szabo. “We've had those discussions in the past, and unfortunately all that they're going to do is divide and derail this process,” he said. The group diverged over facial categorization -- when software separates faces based on physical and stylistic characteristics -- and which counted as discrimination (CD July 25 p14). The group voted to include a parenthetical aside listing specific characteristics that are appropriate for software to use in divvying up faces and which are discriminatory. Szabo voted against it. “The goal for the process is to achieve consensus,” he said. “Discrimination is an emotionally charged word when it sometimes has rather benign characteristics.”
The issue stems from basic disagreement over whether a right to privacy includes a right to anonymity, said Jasinski, whose IBIA initially proposed the parenthetical. Civil liberties advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, have argued that the right to privacy should include some rights to anonymity (CD June 24 p12). Jasinski believes “the law views the two as separate concepts.” Merely capturing an image, but not creating a biometric template may remove one’s anonymity, but reserves privacy, he told us. “At least the discussion is civil,” he said, “and there is a process.” Consensus is built “brick-by-brick” and requires trust, Szabo said. “The last meeting, I think, eroded some of that trust and it’s going to take another meeting or two to rebuild it.”
The prior NTIA-backed code of conduct talks -- on mobile app privacy -- faced similar delays, dissension and disillusionment (CD Dec 5 p11). While the final document received criticism and adoption has been slow, the Application Developers Alliance recently released open source code to give app developers data collection and data use notices in line with NTIA’s privacy code (CD July 25 p9). Microsoft also told us this week it planned to adopt the code. “Microsoft has been a strong supporter of the NTIA’s work in support of transparency in mobile apps,” a spokesperson told us. “We are in the process of implementing the code of conduct for mobile application short notices, and intend to adopt notices consistent with the code in the near future."
"To me, it’s not so much an issue of how long it takes, it’s just whether it’s ultimately worthwhile,” Grant said. The code’s scope is still under question, Grant and others said. “We still have not really come to any agreement on who the code is aimed at,” she said. Grant is encouraging a narrow code, perhaps focused only on retailers’ use of facial recognition technology. Jasinski pointed to the recurring -- and always tabled -- discussion of whether the code should cover government’s use of facial recognition technology for surveillance.
Szabo said the mobile apps document experienced these disagreements over scope, but chose not to resolve them before moving to a final draft. “There was no consensus on the mobile apps document,” he said. This time around, participants must “make sure no one group tries to go it alone.” So when talks resume, the key will be whether common ground is achievable, no matter the timeline, Szabo said. That will be one long timeline, Jasinski said. “You just have different philosophies and I don’t know if it’s going to be a timely resolution.”