Title
Resolution Directing the Appropriate Use of Facial Recognition Technology
Staff
Reviewed by: Andre Anderson, Police Chief
Jen Janetsky, Assistant City Attorney
Body
Whereas, The Ann Arbor City Council finds that facial recognition technology poses unique and significant civil rights and civil liberties threats to residents and visitors of the City of Ann Arbor;
Whereas The Ann Arbor City Council finds that facial recognition technology is historically less accurate in identifying women, young people, and people of color, potentially placing these persons at increased risk of false positive identifications;
Whereas, The Ann Arbor City Council finds that facial recognition technology has an extremely limited view of gender, and that software that excludes transgender, non-binary, agender or genderqueer people may prove discriminatory, harmfully misgendering such persons;
Whereas, The Ann Arbor City Council finds that facial recognition technology does not currently have the ability to see disability in an accurate and non-discriminatory way;
Whereas, The Ann Arbor City Council finds that the biases built into existing facial recognition technology systems and databases lead to potentially biased identification results;
Whereas, The Ann Arbor City Council finds that the broad application of facial recognition technology in public spaces constitutes an unacceptable mass violation of privacy, which can chill the exercise of constitutionally protected free speech;
Whereas, The ACLU has received reports of at least seven wrongful arrests due to police reliance on incorrect face recognition results, and in nearly every one of those instances the person wrongfully arrested was Black;
Whereas, There have been a number of recent cases reported in the national news where undue reliance on facial recognition technology has resulted in serious mistakes, up to and including the arrest and charging innocent people;
Whereas, A misplaced belief in the scient...
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