BREAKING: We’re calling on President Biden to pause all federal government use of face recognition technology.

This tech is flawed, biased against people of color, women, trans people, and more.

Even if it worked exactly as advertised, it would be a nightmare. Let’s explain.

Study after study has confirmed this bias.

One study showed that face recognition tech failed in identifying Black women nearly 1/3 of the time, but was more accurate on white men.

Subsequent studies, including by @ACLU_NorCal and the government, have confirmed these findings.
These biases have real consequences that disproportionately harm Black people.

Robert Williams, Michael Oliver, and Nijeer Parks are all Black men who were wrongly arrested and detained because of this technology. https://t.co/lYu1Mgvm05
Even if face recognition tech worked perfectly, it would be a civil liberties nightmare — giving the government the ability to track us to houses of worship, protests, healthcare appointments, intimate partners’ homes — harming our rights to privacy, speech, and association.
And face recognition technology would surely be used to exacerbate over-policing of communities of color, immigrant communities, poor communities, and others already bearing the brunt of the criminal enforcement system.
Government use of this technology goes beyond law enforcement. It is already being deployed in schools, public housing, and other spaces.

Face recognition tech has no place in our daily lives. It only exacerbates the systemic biases that already exist.
Over the past two years, activists and local leaders have passed bans on government use of face recognition tech in more than a dozen cities and states.

But local authorities have no power over federal agencies like the FBI or ICE, which can still use the technology anywhere.
Right now, President Biden can:

✔️ Sign an executive order halting federal use of face recognition technology
✔️ Limit state and local governments’ ability to purchase the technology with federal money
✔️ Support the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act
Never before has the government possessed a surveillance tool this dangerous.

Tell President Biden to honor his promise to center racial equity and put a stop to this invasive technology. https://t.co/bBkITO2utx

More from Biden

I got overnight via email a query from @briansflood at Fox News, the principal part of which I reproduce below. I answered by email too. I'll append that reply in the next threaded tweet:


My reply:


Hunter Biden's dubious business activities have been reported for years. Here for example is @TheAtlantic in September 2019, year *before* @nypost
https://t.co/qZBTpyuysM


That emails attributed to Hunter Biden were circulating was also known well before the NYPost story in October. Here's TIME magazine https://t.co/JvpEKdG0U4


What @NYPost added to the work earlier done by others was a new *origin* story for the materials that circulated in Ukraine in 2019. When other media organizations attempted to corroborate that story, hijinx ensued. https://t.co/ZJGZWq7etU @thedailybeast account
"Ban" is a verb meaning to "officially or legally prohibit" something. If the Biden administration is not approving new fracking permits, how is that not "officially or legally prohibiting" new fracking permits?


The economy is bleeding, and the Biden administration's response is to cripple one of the few industries that has been consistently employing people throughout this crisis.

But, his allies in the media don't want him to take that PR hit, so they run cover and play word games. Biden's exact words were "We are not going to ban fracking. Period." The "Period." there would imply that ANY ban is off the table.

If you are going to prohibit via executive order - which is nothing more than a law passed outside of the normal legislative process - anything, you are "legally" prohibiting it. There are legal consequences to violating that regulation.

So yes, definitionally, Biden has "legally prohibited" fracking in some way, shape, or form, which is the opposite of his campaign statements.

In other words, he lied.

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