What you need to know about face surveillance

Privacy isn't dead, but face surveillance technology might kill it, says civil rights advocate Kade Crockford. In an eye-opening talk, Kade outlines the startling reasons why this invasive technology -- powered by often-flawed facial recognition databases that track people without their knowledge -- poses unprecedented threats to your fundamental rights. Learn what can be done to ban government use before it's too late.

How many of you
have ever heard someone say

privacy is dead?

Raise your hand.

How many of you have heard someone say

they don't care about their privacy
because they don't have anything to hide?

Go on.

(Laughter)

Now, how many of you
use any kind of encryption software?

Raise your hand.

Or a password
to protect an online account?

Or curtains or blinds
on your windows at home?

(Laughter)

OK, so that's everyone, I think.

(Laughter)

So why do you do these things?

My guess is,

it's because you care about your privacy.

The idea that privacy is dead is a myth.

The idea that people
don't care about their privacy

because "they have nothing to hide"

or they've done nothing wrong

is also a myth.

I'm guessing that you would not want
to publicly share on the internet,

for the world to see,

all of your medical records.

Or your search histories
from your phone or your computer.

And I bet

that if the government
wanted to put a chip in your brain

to transmit every one of your thoughts
to a centralized government computer,

you would balk at that.

(Laughter)

That's because you care
about your privacy,

like every human being.

So, our world has changed fast.

And today, there is understandably
a lot of confusion

about what privacy is and why it matters.

Privacy is not secrecy.

It's control.

I share information with my doctor
about my body and my health,

expecting that she is not
going to turn around

and share that information
with my parents,

or my boss or my kids.

That information is private, not secret.

I'm in control over how
that information is shared.

You've probably heard people say
that there's a fundamental tension

between privacy on the one hand

and safety on the other.

But the technologies
that advance our privacy

also advance our safety.

Think about fences, door locks,

curtains on our windows, passwords,

encryption software.

All of these technologies

simultaneously protect
our privacy and our safety.

Dragnet surveillance,
on the other hand, protects neither.

In recent years,

the federal government
tasked a group of experts

called The Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board

with examining post-9/11
government surveillance programs,

dragnet surveillance programs.

Those experts could not find
a single example

of that dragnet surveillance
advancing any safety --

didn't identify or stop
a single terrorist attack.

You know what that information
was useful for, though?

Helping NSA employees
spy on their romantic interests.

(Laughter)

(Audience: Wow.)

Another example is closer to home.

So millions of people
across the United States and the world

are adopting so-called
"smart home" devices,

like internet-connected
surveillance cameras.

But we know that any technology
connected to the internet

can be hacked.

And so if a hacker

gets into your internet-connected
surveillance camera at home,

they can watch you
and your family coming and going,

finding just the right time to strike.

You know what can't be hacked remotely?

Curtains.

(Laughter)

Fences.

Door locks.

(Laughter)

Privacy is not the enemy of safety.

It is its guarantor.

Nonetheless, we daily face
a propaganda onslaught

telling us that we have to give up
some privacy in exchange for safety

through surveillance programs.

Face surveillance is the most dangerous
of these technologies.

There are two primary ways today
governments use technologies like this.

One is face recognition.

That's to identify someone in an image.

The second is face surveillance,

which can be used in concert

with surveillance-camera
networks and databases

to create records of all people's
public movements,

habits and associations,

effectively creating a digital panopticon.

This is a panopticon.

It's a prison designed to allow
a few guards in the center

to monitor everything happening
in the cells around the perimeter.

The people in those prison cells
can't see inside the guard tower,

but the guards can see
into every inch of those cells.

The idea here

is that if the people
in those prison cells

know they're being watched all the time,

or could be,

they'll behave accordingly.

Similarly, face surveillance
enables a centralized authority --

in this case, the state --

to monitor the totality
of human movement and association

in public space.

And here's what it looks like

in real life.

In this case, it's not a guard in a tower,

but rather a police analyst
in a spy center.

The prison expands beyond its walls,

encompassing everyone,

everywhere, all the time.

In a free society,

this should terrify us all.

For decades now, we've watched cop shows

that push a narrative that says

technologies like face surveillance
ultimately serve the public good.

But real life is not a cop drama.

The bad guy didn't always do it,

the cops definitely
aren't always the good guys

and the technology doesn't always work.

Take the case of Steve Talley,

a financial analyst from Colorado.

In 2015, Talley was arrested,
and he was charged with bank robbery

on the basis of an error
in a facial recognition system.

Talley fought that case

and he eventually was cleared
of those charges,

but while he was being
persecuted by the state,

he lost his house, his job and his kids.

Steve Talley's case is an example

of what can happen
when the technology fails.

But face surveillance is just as dangerous
when it works as advertized.

Just consider how trivial it would be

for a government agency
to put a surveillance camera

outside a building where people meet
for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

They could connect that camera

to a face-surveillance algorithm
and a database,

press a button and sit back and collect

a record of every person
receiving treatment for alcoholism.

It would be just as easy
for a government agency

to use this technology
to automatically identify

every person who attended
the Women's March

or a Black Lives Matter protest.

Even the technology industry
is aware of the gravity of this problem.

Microsoft's president Brad Smith
has called on Congress to intervene.

Google, for its part,

has publicly declined
to ship a face surveillance product,

in part because of these grave
human and civil rights concerns.

And that's a good thing.

Because ultimately,

protecting our open society
is much more important

than corporate profit.

The ACLU's nationwide campaign

to get the government to pump the brakes

on the adoption
of this dangerous technology

has prompted reasonable questions
from thoughtful people.

What makes this technology
in particular so dangerous?

Why can't we just regulate it?

In short, why the alarm?

Face surveillance is uniquely dangerous
for two related reasons.

One is the nature
of the technology itself.

And the second is that our system

fundamentally lacks the oversight
and accountability mechanisms

that would be necessary

to ensure it would not be abused
in the government's hands.

First, face surveillance enables
a totalizing form of surveillance

never before possible.

Every single person's every visit
to a friend's house,

a government office,

a house of worship,

a Planned Parenthood,

a cannabis shop,

a strip club;

every single person's public movements,
habits and associations

documented and catalogued,

not on one day, but on every day,

merely with the push of a button.

This kind of totalizing mass surveillance

fundamentally threatens
what it means to live in a free society.

Our freedom of speech,
freedom of association,

freedom of religion,

freedom of the press,

our privacy,

our right to be left alone.

You may be thinking,

"OK, come on, but there are tons
of ways the government can spy on us."

And yes, it's true,

the government can track us
through our cell phones,

but if I want to go to get an abortion,

or attend a political meeting,

or even just call in sick
and play hooky and go to the beach ...

(Laughter)

I can leave my phone at home.

I cannot leave my face at home.

And that brings me
to my second primary concern:

How we might meaningfully
regulate this technology.

Today, if the government wants to know
where I was last week,

they can't just hop into a time machine
and go back in time and follow me.

And they also, the local police right now,

don't maintain any centralized
system of tracking,

where they're cataloging every person's
public movements all the time,

just in case that information
some day becomes useful.

Today, if the government
wants to know where I was last week,

or last month or last year,

they have to go to a judge, get a warrant

and then serve that warrant
on my phone company,

which by the way, has a financial interest
in protecting my privacy.

With face surveillance,

no such limitations exist.

This is technology that is 100 percent
controlled by the government itself.

So how would a warrant requirement
work in this context?

Is the government going to go to a judge

and get a warrant,

and then serve the warrant on themselves?

That would be like me giving you my diary,

and saying, "Here,
you can hold on to this forever,

but you can't read it
until I say it's OK."

So what can we do?

The only answer to the threat

posed by the government's use
of face surveillance

is to deny the government the capacity
to violate the public's trust,

by denying the government the ability

to build these in-house
face-surveillance networks.

And that's exactly what we're doing.

The ACLU is part of a nationwide campaign

to pump the brakes on the government's use
of this dangerous technology.

We've already been successful,

from San Francisco
to Somerville, Massachusetts,

we have passed municipal bans

on the government's
use of this technology.

And plenty of other communities
here in Massachusetts

and across the country

are debating similar measures.

Some people have told me
that this movement is bound to fail.

That ultimately,

merely because the technology exists,

it will be deployed in every context

by every government everywhere.

Privacy is dead, right?

So the narrative goes.

Well, I refuse to accept that narrative.

And you should, too.

We can't allow Jeff Bezos or the FBI

to determine the boundaries
of our freedoms in the 21st century.

If we live in a democracy,

we are in the driver's seat,

shaping our collective future.

We are at a fork in the road right now.

We can either continue
with business as usual,

allowing governments to adopt and deploy
these technologies unchecked,

in our communities, our streets
and our schools,

or we can take bold action now

to press pause on the government's use
of face surveillance,

protect our privacy

and to build a safer, freer future

for all of us.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)