New Advocacy Campaign Calls for Banning Facial Recognition on College Campuses
New Advocacy Campaign Calls for Banning Facial Recognition on College Campuses
New Advocacy Campaign Calls for Banning Facial Recognition on College Campuses
By Rebecca Koenig
January 22, 2020
Summary
A satirical student newspaper recently wrote that Stanford University installed facial recognition cameras in the front of some lecture halls to take attendance and analyze the expressions on students' faces.
Last week saw the launch of "Ban Facial Recognition on Campus," a nationwide campaign from the nonprofit advocacy organizations Fight for the Future and Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
The movement aims to rally students, faculty and other stakeholders to urge transparency about how institutions of higher ed already use facial recognition tools and press colleges to ban future use of the technology in campus settings.
Campaign organizers oppose facial recognition because they believe the technology could violate students' privacy without their consent and exacerbate bias toward and discrimination against minorities, says Erica Darragh, board member for Students for Sensible Drug Policy who graduated from the University of North Georgia in 2018.
With little fanfare or regulation, facial recognition technology has been adopted by private companies, police departments and government agencies in the U.S. and abroad, largely for purposes of surveillance and security, as the Financial Times reported last fall.
In December, a study published by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology found that facial recognition algorithms are generally less accurate at identifying women and racial minorities.
Academic research has brought facial recognition projects to a few college campuses, including Duke University and the University of Colorado.
Even if facial recognition on campus remains mostly fodder for satire and speculation, campaign organizers see another purpose for student advocacy: generating support for larger efforts to ban facial recognition more broadly.
At the federal level, last week the congressional Committee on Oversight and Reform held a hearing on facial recognition technology, its third in less than a year.
Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, a democrat from New York, announced a commitment to introducing "Common-sense" facial recognition legislation "In the near future."
Reference
Koenig, R. (2020, January 22). New Advocacy Campaign Calls for Banning Facial Recognition on College Campuses - EdSurge News. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-01-22-new-advocacy-campaign-calls-for-banning-facial-recognition-on-college-campuses