John Oliver sheds light on misuse of facial recognition technology by law enforcement
On Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Sunday, Oliver shed some light on the misuse of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. There has been serious concern that the police are currently using facial recognition to identify Black Lives Matter protesters, and as Oliver pointed out, if they are, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Video Transcript
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JOHN OLIVER: There are currently serious concerns that facial recognition is being used to identify Black Lives Matter protesters. And if that's true, it wouldn't actually be the first time.
- On "Last Week Tonight," John Oliver shed some light on the misuse of facial recognition technology by law enforcement like in 2015, when the police used facial recognition to identify and arrest protesters following the death of Freddie Gray.
JOHN OLIVER: During the Freddie Gray protests, police officers used facial recognition technology to look for people with outstanding warrants and arrest them, which is a pretty sinister way to undermine the right to assemble.
- As an example of a government going too far, Oliver highlighted the widespread use of facial recognition in China, which has become concerning for some citizens.
INTERPRETER: We can match your face with your car, match you with your relatives, and the people you're in touch with. With enough cameras, we can know who you frequently meet.
JOHN OLIVER: That is a terrifying level of surveillance. Imagine the Eye of Sauron, but instead of scouring Middle Earth for the one ring, he was just really into knowing where all his Orcs liked to go to dinner.
- Due to public outcry, IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon are not allowing the police to access their facial recognition technology and IBM has stopped developing the technology for mass surveillance altogether. But that won't stop law enforcement from accessing millions of photos of American citizens.
JOHN OLIVER: And the databases law enforcement are pulling from include over 117 million American adults and incorporate, among other things, driver's license photos from residents of all these states. So roughly one in two of us have had our photo searched this way.
- And hundreds of law enforcement agencies use a facial recognition service that pulls people's photos off social media without their knowledge, something that may not even be legal in Europe.
JOHN OLIVER: The notion that someone can take your picture and immediately find out everything about you is alarming enough, even before you discover that over 600 law enforcement agencies have been using Clearview's service, and you're probably in that database even if you don't know it.
