[jmole]

I agree 1000% that the unconsented use of someone’s image as training data or as a target match for facial recognition ought to be illegal, or at least as inadmissible in court as the statement “we had Joe review the footage, and he swears that the guy there in brown is his old college roommate’s friend Jimbo”

But matching against a govt-collected set (photo IDs for example), has well known precedent in fingerprinting.

I think requiring a judge to sign off is the right idea in principle, though in practice, I’d prefer it to be an open-records administrative function of the govt instead, in particular for cases where there is no known ID for the suspect.

To get a facial recognition done, you have to provide a video with enough context that shows someone committing a crime. That video is reviewed by the non-police administrative function, and then the request is either granted or denied.

Records are kept for later review and appeal, and are ideally public record, although I can certainly imagine cases (like porch pirates) where a public record of the video could open up an accuser (or an accused, for that matter) to later threats of harassment or violence.