REMARKS
Council Member Shahana K. Hanif opens NYC City Council hearing on prohibiting businesses from using biometric surveillance technology
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4 min
Council Member Shahana K. Hanif explains the urgency of passing legislation to prohibit businesses from using facial recognition and biometric surveillance technology in New York City.
- She cites a Federal Trade Commission finding that Rite Aid falsely identified thousands of people of color and women as shoplifters using facial recognition
- The bill would ban businesses like music venues, theaters, and supermarkets from using biometric surveillance to identify customers
- Hanif rejects claims that facial recognition is an essential security measure, calling it discriminatory and harmful
- She thanks the 'Ban the Scan' coalition supporting the bill and calls for future legislation banning city government use of biometric surveillance
Shahana K. Hanif
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Thank you, Chair Gutierrez, for holding today's important hearing and for including my bill, intro 217 on today's agenda.
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I am proud that 17 members of the council currently sponsored this bill, including co prime sponsors, Sierra Gutierrez, and council members, Rivera, William Sanchez, Lewis, and Marte.
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Inter 217 would prohibit businesses and other places of public accommodation.
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This includes music venues, theaters, supermarkets, from using facial recognition and other forms of biometric surveillance to verify or identify a customer.
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This measure is critical to combatting wrongful discrimination.
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Facial recognition tools have consistently been shown to have significantly higher inaccuracy rates for people of color and women.
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This has resulted in people in these populations being falsely accused of wrongdoing and denied access to public basis.
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It is also a matter of basic privacy.
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People have a right to access essential places like grocery stores without having their personal biometric information like the shape of their face and the way they that they walk, collected, used, or sold, for targeted advertising or other purposes.
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Since this bill was heard last session, there have been countless developments that have made this the passage of this bill more urgent than ever, including wrongful arrests and data leaks.
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But the event that stands out the most to me is the Federal Trade Commission's finding in December that the pharmacy chain Rite Aid used facial recognition technology to falsely and disproport fortunately identify thousands of people of color and women as likely shop lifters, including those right here in New York City.
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The FTC describes the pattern as follows.
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Acting on false positive facial recognition matches Employees followed customers around its stores, searched them, ordered them to leave, call the police to confront, or remove consumers, and publicly accuse them sometimes in front of friends or family of shoplifting or other wrongdoing.
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In one case, a false match resulted in an eleven year old being wrongly stopped and searched.
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I urge those here today to imagine how dehumanizing it would be to be one of these customers.
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The FTC finding emphasizes the discrimination and harm caused by biometric surveillance is not a paranoid hypothetical or a one off incident.
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It is here, it is real, and we need to act.
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While Rite Aid is now prohibited, from using biometric surveillance for the next 5 years.
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We shouldn't need a federal investigation and lawsuit to prohibit other businesses from replicating this practice and victimizing more New Yorkers.
0:07:25
I wanna stress that the bill takes a measured approach.
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If if past customers would still be able to opt in to biometric uses such as pay by palm, at a grocery store checkout or a biometric travel document verification at the airport.
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Additionally, businesses that truly need to collect and use biometric technology to carry out core functions such as custom running shoe store, that uses gate analysis would be permitted to do so.
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We are pushing for basic consumer protections, not ideological absolutism.
0:08:02
Additionally, I want to make it clear that this bill does not impact normal security tools like video monitoring.
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I share concerns around retail theft and repeat offenders and encourage the city to support our small businesses.
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With fine with funding for infrastructure security upgrades.
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However, as evidenced by the right case, biometric surveillance is not an effective tool and in many ways can make New Yorkers less safe.
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I reject the premise that facial recognition is an essential security measure.
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As a Muslim New Yorker who grew up in the post 911 era, I'm all too familiar with the negative consequences.
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Of using fear to justify excessive and biased surveillance.
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I wanna thank the incredible ban the scan coalition who we rallied outside with earlier today and who are here to sub testify in support of intro 217, this broad and diverse coalition of racial justice leaders, civil and human rights institutions, and technology experts are so important.
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I also wanna state my support for council member Rivera's intro 425, which I am proud to co prime sponsor, and amplify the coalition's call for future legislation.
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That would ban city government use of biometric surveillance as well.
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I'll now pass it back to the chair.
