https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/30/22557516/maine-facial-recognition-ban-state-law

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Filed under:

  * Policy
  * Tech
  * Artificial Intelligence

Maine passes the strongest state facial recognition ban yet

The law bans most use of the technology and adds accountability
measures

By Dave Gershgorn Jun 30, 2021, 1:49pm EDT

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[acastro_18] Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The state of Maine now has the most stringent laws regulating
government use of facial recognition in the country.

The new law prohibits government use of facial recognition except in
specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being
if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image
committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention.

Since Maine police will not have access to facial recognition, they
will be able to ask the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV)
to run these searches.

Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past
to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other
agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs
of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are
designated as public records.

The ACLU trumpeted this new law as a major win for state action to
block facial recognition.

"Maine is showing the rest of the country what it looks like when we
the people are in control of our civil rights and civil liberties,
not tech companies that stand to profit from widespread government
use of face surveillance technology," Michael Kebede, a lawyer at the
ACLU of Maine, said in a press release.

The only other state-wide facial recognition law was enacted by
Washington in 2020, but many privacy advocates were dissatisfied with
the specifics of the law. The Washington law gives police generous
carve-outs to conduct surveillance with the technology and also
allows the technology to be used to deny access to services like
housing or education enrollment. Notably, it was written by State
Senator Joe Nguyen, who is a current employee of Microsoft.

Virginia and Massachusetts legislatures have also banned some police
use of facial recognition, but both fall short of regulating the tech
in schools and other state agencies.

Maine's new law also gives citizens the ability to sue the state if
they've been unlawfully targeted by facial recognition, which was
notably absent from Washington's regulation. If facial recognition
searches are performed illegally, they must be deleted and cannot be
used as evidence.

The law was enacted after passing state legislature and will not
require a signature from Maine Governor Janet Mills. It will go into
effect on October 1st, 2021.

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