Benton sheriff should impose strict oversight if county deploys facial recognition | Opinion

The Benton County Sheriff’s Office wants to become the first agency in Washington to deploy facial recognition software.

Before signing off on it, the public and county commissioners should demand strict accountability that safeguards the rights and well-being of residents.

Problems with facial recognition systems have been especially acute when they target people of color. The systems notoriously struggle to correctly identify people with brown or black skin.

In a law enforcement setting, incorrect identifications can lead to no end of trouble for innocent people and can perpetuate systemic inequalities within the justice system.

Another risk is that the sheriff’s office will use the technology not just to find the worst of the worst offenders but also to identify people suspected of committing routine offenses or no offense at all. Stories abound of law enforcement officers in other places checking photos to stalk a love interest or harass homeless residents.

Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook, all of which had researched facial recognition technology, never deployed those systems because of such concerns. The civil rights dangers were too great in their estimation.

Yet, if Benton County minimizes risks, facial recognition systems might become a useful law enforcement tool.

A 2020 law signed by Gov. Jay Inslee puts some guardrails on what’s allowed. The sheriff’s office must follow a state-mandated approval process that includes a report on how the office would manage use of the technology to protect people’s privacy. The law warns, “Unconstrained use of facial recognition services by state and local government agencies poses broad social ramifications that should be considered and addressed.”

Lawmakers worried that without proper oversight and regulation, facial recognition could “threaten our democratic freedoms and put our civil liberties at risk.”

In addition to the 2020 law, at least King County, the city of Bellingham and the Port of Seattle have banned facial recognition for law enforcement.

Benton County Sheriff Tom Croskrey will release the required report after a public hearing at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 26, in Room 303 of the Benton County Administration Building in Kennewick. It would have been better had he released the report in advance so that people could make informed comments. At least the public will have 90 days to weigh in before commissioners decide whether to move forward.

Croskrey wants to contract with a company called Clearview AI. The company provides facial recognition technology to clients, many of them law enforcement, around the world. It has even provided its identification tools for free to the Ukrainian government, which has used the system to identify almost a quarter million Russian soldiers, Russian officials and members of aligned militias.

Clearview has taken heat for how invasive its system is. It matches images of faces against a database rumored to contain tens of billions of photos scraped from publicly accessible social media and other online sites without anyone’s consent. Let that fact serve as one more reminder that people should think twice before posting their latest vacation pics for all to see. Your friends aren’t the only ones looking.

The sheriff’s office says that two investigators would review any matches to ensure accuracy and reduce false positives. That’s a good idea, but it can’t be the only check on the system.

Strong public oversight will be the best defense for the public. That should take the form of an annual, independent audit of how the sheriff’s office used facial recognition tools, how effective it’s been at identifying alleged perpetrators and how well it has avoided bias against communities of color. That report, its methodology and its data all should be made public.

If Clearview pushes back against such review, if it cites “proprietary technology” as reason to keep the public in the dark, then that should worry Tri-Cities residents and leaders about the worth of the entire endeavor.

Give law enforcement the tools they need to keep communities safe but require independent oversight that makes sure those tools don’t erode privacy and civil rights.