#TELL CONGRESS ITS TIME UP CONTROL SOFTWARE#

They say abusive dating partners, those convicted of hate crimes and people with mental illness who pose a safety risk, among others, should be barred from buying firearms. Those policies include mandating background checks for all gun purchases, including those overseen by unlicensed sellers online or at gun shows, and enforcing a waiting period after someone buys a firearm.Īdvocates have also called for expanding the restrictions on people who can legally acquire guns.

Gun control advocates have outlined an extensive and specific plan to lower the number of deaths caused by firearms in the US.

What policies have been proposed to address mass shootings? He fatally shot 10 people, most of them African American. Less than two weeks before the shooting in Uvalde, a gunman opened fire at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. That’s why we’re asking you to insist your elected officials co-sponsor the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, S.2052 in the Senate.The US has already seen other devastating examples of mass shootings this month. The bill would ban the use of face surveillance by the federal government, as well as withhold certain federal funds from local and state governments that use the technology. This important bill would be a critical step to ensuring that mass surveillance systems don’t use your face to track, identify, or harm you. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and by Representatives Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), and Rashida Tlaib (MI-13). It was recently introduced by Senators Edward J. Tell your Senators and Representatives they must co-sponsor and pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act. The bill would ensure that these agencies cannot use this invasive technology to track, identify, and misidentify millions of people. This federal ban on face surveillance would apply to increasingly powerful agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Customs and Border Patrol.

#TELL CONGRESS ITS TIME UP CONTROL SOFTWARE#

How many more have already endured the same injustices without the media’s spotlight? These incidents show another reason why police cannot be trusted with this technology: a piece of software intended to identify investigative leads is often used in the field to determine who should be arrested without independent officer vetting. Williams and two other Black men ( Michael Oliver and Nijeer Parks ) have garnered the attention of national media after face recognition technology led to them being falsely arrested by police. The larger concern is that law enforcement will use this invasive and dangerous technology, as it unfortunately uses all such tools, to disparately surveil people of color. The problem isn’t just that studies have found face recognition disparately inaccurate when it comes to matching the faces of people of color. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on his behalf against the Detroit police. Last year, the New York Times published a long piece on the case of Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, who was arrested by Detroit police after face recognition technology wrongly identified him as a suspect in a theft case. Face surveillance in the hands of the government is a fundamentally harmful technology, even under strict regulations or if the technology was 100% accurate.įace surveillance also disproportionately hurts vulnerable communities. Police and other government use of this technology cannot be responsibly regulated. TELL congress: END federal use of face surveillance

We’ve created a campaign that will easily allow you to contact your elected federal officials and tell them to co-sponsor the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act. Even Amazon, known for operating one of the largest video surveillance networks in the history of the world, extended its moratorium on selling face recognition to police. From Boston to San Francisco, New Orleans to Minneapolis, elected officials and activists know that face surveillance gives police the power to track us wherever we go, disproportionately impacts people of color, turns us all into perpetual suspects, increases the likelihood of being falsely arrested, and chills people’s willingness to participate in first amendment protected activities. Cities and states across the country have banned government use of face surveillance technology, and many more are weighing proposals to do so.

Tell congress its time up control