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A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study will assess current capabilities, future possibilities, societal implications, and governance of facial recognition (FR) technologies. The study will address current use cases, explain how facial recognition technologies operate, and the legal, social, and ethical issues implicated by their use.
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Consensus
·2024
Facial recognition technology is increasingly used for identity verification and identification, from aiding law enforcement investigations to identifying potential security threats at large venues. However, advances in this technology have outpaced laws and regulations, raising significant concern...
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Description
A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study will assess current capabilities, future possibilities, societal implications, and governance of facial recognition (FR) technologies. It will:
- Provide a broadly accessible explanation of FR technologies, their relationship to artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, applications of FR technologies, and interactions and interoperability of FR technologies with other systems;
- Review existing governmental and other efforts aimed at explaining the workings and implications of FR technologies;
- Assess the strengths, capabilities, risks and limitations of FR technologies, to include measures of performance and cost and differential accuracy across subpopulations (e.g., across races, genders, and ages);
- Consider current approaches to governing the use of FR technologies in law enforcement, non-law enforcement, and other common use cases and describe implications of the use of FR technology and requirements for adequate safeguards;
- Consider concerns about the impacts of FR technologies in public and private settings on privacy, civil liberties, and human rights, including issues of usability, equity, fairness, privacy, consent, community interests, and other societal considerations affecting FR acceptability; and
- Develop recommendations to govern the use and performance of facial recognition technologies in ways that could increase quality and efficiency, increase public safety, and safeguard privacy, civil liberties, and human rights.
Contributors
Committee
Co-Chair
Co-Chair
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Member
Brendan Roach
Staff Officer
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Professor Anil Jain has a conflict of interest in relation to his service on the Committee on Facial Recognition: Current Capabilities, Future Prospects because he is a consultant for Amazon on technologies relating to palm print recognition and has stock holdings in Microsoft Corporation, Amazon.com, Inc., and Rank One Computing.
The National Academies has concluded that for this committee to accomplish the tasks for which it was established, its membership must include at least one person who has current experience in the development and application in industry of facial recognition technologies, biometrics, pattern recognition, and computer vision. As described in his biographical summary, Professor Jain has current experience working on design and applications of pattern recognition systems, focusing on automatic fingerprint recognition, automatic face recognition and large scale data clustering.
The National Academies has determined that the experience and expertise of Professor Jain is needed for the committee to accomplish the task for which it has been established. The National Academies could not find another available individual with the equivalent experience and expertise who does not have a conflict of interest. Therefore, the National Academies has concluded that the conflict is unavoidable.
The National Academies believes that Professor Jain can serve effectively as a member of the committee, and the committee can produce an objective report, taking into account the composition of the committee, the work to be performed, and the procedures to be followed in completing the study.
Sponsors
Department of Homeland Security
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Staff
Jon Eisenberg
Lead
Brendan Roach
Lead
Steven Kendall
Emily Backes
Major units and sub-units
Policy and Global Affairs
Lead
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences
Lead
Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
Lead
Center for Advancing Science and Technology
Lead
Committee on Science, Technology, and Law
Lead
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
Lead
Science and Technology Policy and Law Program Area
Lead
Computing Research, Technologies, and Systems Program Area
Lead
Committee on Law and Justice
Lead
