She was denied entry to a Rockettes show — then the facial recognition debate ignited
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Last week a group of New York lawmakers gathered for a protest outside Madison Square Garden. They said the way the garden's management uses facial recognition technology raises serious privacy concerns. MSG Entertainment, which owns Madison Square Garden and other New York venues including Radio City Music Hall, says it uses the technology for security reasons. NPR's Manuela Lopez Restrepo reports.
MANUELA LOPEZ RESTREPO, BYLINE: It was supposed to be an evening excursion for her daughter's Girl Scout troop. But when Kelly Conlin, an attorney from New Jersey, attempted to enter Radio City Music Hall, she was taken aside and prevented from going in. Conlin was told she was added to an attorney exclusion list for the venue because her law firm was involved in active litigation against MSG Entertainment. Digital privacy activists say using the tech for this purpose sets a threatening precedent.
EVAN GREER: What makes this technology so frightening is that it enables a type of tracking at a scale that was previously impossible. The ability to analyze that footage and sift through it almost instantaneously, looking for specific people is what kind of ratchets the alarm bells here up so high.
LOPEZ RESTREPO: That's Evan Greer, the director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization. Greer and other digital privacy advocates have many concerns about facial recognition being used without any type of regulation. They say the technology is faulty, invasive and proven to be less effective. Hannah Bloch-Wehba is an associate law professor at Texas A&M who specializes in privacy, technology and democratic governance.
HANNAH BLOCH-WEHBA: Facial recognition technology tends to misidentify people of color and, in particular, women of color. It tends to misidentify them much more frequently than it does white people. And so I could see a serious concern about the sort of racial and gender bias implications of this kind of tech being used to screen people.
LOPEZ RESTREPO: The software works by comparing images to one another and to live footage from inside a venue, for example. If there's a match, the system will point it out. Sometimes it works accurately. Sometimes it doesn't. Greer recalls a case in Detroit where a Black teenager was kicked out of a roller rink in 2021 after she was mistakenly singled out by facial recognition technology.
GREER: And this poor young girl was thrown out of a roller skating rink because the facial recognition technology effectively mislabeled her as someone who had previously gotten into a fight.
LOPEZ RESTREPO: And over the past few years, a number of Black men have been falsely identified as suspects in criminal investigations that used facial recognition software, in some cases resulting in wrongful arrests and charges. In New York, MSG Entertainment's practice of using facial recognition technology to keep attorneys out of its venues has been challenged in court, and the outcome of those cases could determine how the technology is used in the future.
ALBERT FOX CAHN: New York has given businesses free rein to use facial recognition in their properties, and it was only a matter of time before we saw owners using it to retaliate this way.
LOPEZ RESTREPO: Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or S.T.O.P., says his organization, alongside others, has been fighting to curb the use of this software in public spaces in New York and hope for a federal ban as well.
CAHN: The problem is that the political will, even though it's pushing for more and more constraints on how the technology is used - it's not moving as quickly as the pace of the technology itself. And more importantly, we see a lot of people making a lot of money selling this technology to the city and to businesses in the city.
LOPEZ RESTREPO: Some who work in security see facial recognition technology simply as a tool to help streamline everyday processes. Jake Parker is the senior director of government relations for the Security Industry Association, a trade group for security companies.
JAKE PARKER: It makes me think about, you know, how many times has someone subject to a restraining order showed up without warning at a workplace and committed violence despite the restriction? And unfortunately, this happens all the time, and women are often the victims.
LOPEZ RESTREPO: Parker believes the tech can help secure public spaces like schools, airports, music venues and other places that may require identity verification as well as make them more efficient.
PARKER: With almost any application of facial recognition, it is augmenting. It's helping a human-controlled process become faster and more accurate.
LOPEZ RESTREPO: In a statement to NPR, MSG Entertainment said facial recognition technology was widely used throughout the country, including in the sports and entertainment industry, retail, casinos and airports, to, quote, "protect the safety of the people that visit and work at those locations." To critics like Hannah Bloch-Wehba, there needs to be a better definition of what protecting people's safety actually means.
BLOCH-WEBA: So we have to ask, well, who are you trying to keep them safe from? How are you deciding who poses the threat? Is that a decision that, you know, the management of the venue is making, or is it a decision that the technological product is making? And who is checking that decision, right?
LOPEZ RESTREPO: Manuela Lopez Restrepo, NPR News.
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