House reps ask HUD to end use of facial-recognition tech in public housing

Facial-recognition technology has spurred controversy in state and local governments, and in the halls of Congress, members are looking to ban the tech’s use in public housing.

Representatives Maxine Waters of California and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts wrote to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia L. Fudge in late May, asking her to prohibit “the use of facial-recognition technology in public and HUD-assisted housing for surveillance purposes.”

Waters and Pressley’s letter said that government funds should not be used on facial-recognition tech, arguing that it “​​causes harm to the very residents it is meant to protect.”

“The technology increases the ease and incidence of harassment of residents for committing minor community rules violations,” the letter said. “Even more disturbingly, we know that these technologies have a significant discriminatory impact that arises from identification errors related to individuals’ skin color, gender, and age and other forms of bias built into these systems.”

In an April notice detailing the use of Emergency Safety and Security Grants, which provide “one-time project-specific assistance for emergency safety and security items,” the agency noted that it’s verboten to spend the funds on facial-recognition tech. However, the funds can be used to purchase, install, repair, or replace safety equipment like traditional security cameras, fencing, lights, and alarms, among others.

On the legislative front, the letter said that the representatives will “continue to push for legislation that will protect community members’ data from use in systems that perpetuate inequities,” but emphasized that HUD should act now on banning facial recognition in the absence of legislation.

The Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which would ban federal government use of biometric recognition technology, was first introduced in 2020 and reintroduced in March.

Facial-recognition technology is available to be used in public housing in 13 US cities, the Washington Post reported. Six of those cities—Cincinnati; Omaha; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Duffield, Virginia; Steubenville, Ohio; and Union City, Tennessee—plan to use the tech to identify banned individuals, help police investigations, grant tenants access to buildings, or monitor lease violations, the Post reported. Public housing authorities in seven other cities told the Post “they have the capability but are not currently using it.”

There has been backlash against the installation and use of facial-recognition cameras on things like streetlights in states and cities across the country. In a Tech Brew-Harris Poll survey last year, 19% of respondents said that they somewhat oppose or strongly oppose facial-recognition technology, which was the most-opposed technology behind autonomous robotaxi services.

States like Alabama, Colorado, and Virginia, and cities like New Orleans and San Diego have passed laws limiting or prohibiting the use of facial-recognition tech, though some have walked it back, arguing that the tech could help law enforcement.