TESTIMONY
Hally Thornton, Staff Member at Fight for the Future, on the Dangers of Facial Recognition Technology in Public Spaces and Residential Buildings
3:38:56
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Hally Thornton testifies virtually on behalf of Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization, in support of banning facial recognition technology in public places and residential buildings in New York City.
- Fight for the Future strongly opposes technologies that collect and store people's biometric data on a mass scale.
- Facial recognition enables mass surveillance and tracking at an unprecedented level, eliminating privacy.
- Once companies collect biometric data, there is no control over how it may be used, sold, or shared with law enforcement.
- Biometric databases containing unchangeable bodily data have already been hacked, posing serious privacy and safety risks.
- The New York City Department of Education concluded that the harms of facial recognition far outweigh any potential benefits, leading to its ban in schools.
- Thornton urges the City Council to similarly ban facial recognition in public accommodations and residential buildings.
Hally Thornton
3:38:56
Hello.
3:38:57
Thank you so much for allowing me to testify virtually today.
3:39:01
Good afternoon.
3:39:02
My name is Holly Burton, and I have been a resident New York City for 14 years.
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And I'm testifying today on behalf of Skype for the future in support of banning facial recognition and public places and residential buildings.
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Right for the future is the digital rights organization with over 2,500,000 members nationwide including over 85,000 in New York City.
3:39:25
I'm a staff member at-site focused on administrative and campaign support.
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Our group is strongly opposed to the use of technologies that collect people's biometric data and store that data and mass in the cloud.
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This includes the facial recognition tools used in places of public accommodation and residential buildings.
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Once companies collect this data, we have virtually no way of knowing how they'll use it.
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They can sell it to data brokers or share it with abusive law enforcement agencies.
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Facial recognition technology enables mass monitoring and tracking at a previously impossible scale.
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And each time biometric biometric data is shared or linked, it brings us one step closer to a world in which everyone has identified wherever they go, and privacy no longer exists.
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Databases of biometric information, Unchangeable bodily data have also already been hacked, posing unprecedented risks to people's privacy and safety.
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Industry groups.
3:40:25
We'll claim that the data they're collecting isn't useful to hackers or anyone else, but that's not the case.
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If companies create systems for identifying people who are otherwise anonymous using facial recognition, then law enforcement hackers and others can abuse and or recreate those systems.
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As the New York Department of Education concluded after studying the use of this tech in schools, The harms of facial recognition far outweigh any possible benefits.
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Facial recognition has been banned in New York Schools, and we urge the council to ban it in places of public accommodation and residential buildings.
3:40:58
Thank you.
