Hanif questions panel on biometric surveillance and Ban the Scan

Thank you.

Thank you for your expertise, and this is for everyone on the panel.

As AI and facial recognition technologies become more powerful, what safeguards should cities put in place to prevent surveillance tools from being used to target people based on their identity, associations, or political activity?

Would legislation like my ban the scan bill, which would regulate and prohibit biometric surveillance in places of public accommodation, provide an important safeguard?

And I'm particularly interested in your assessment of Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan's use of biometric surveillance to identify and exclude individuals.

Thank you.

Anyone.

Yeah.

Okay.

So absolutely, I'm very supportive of your bill, and I think that we have a lack of data protection in this city, in this country, in the state, right?

And data protection is a tremendously important issue, and because of how convenient AI tools are,

people very often voluntarily give up very private information about themselves.

So I actually have in my written testimony that's much longer examples of AI assistants being marketed that essentially people give access to their calendars, their children's

biometrics, the schedules, all of the school contact information, right?

So we really need to educate the public about

the benefits, but also the risks that data sharing poses.

And we need to establish a proper data protection regime in the city.

There's no way around it.

So as I mentioned in my statement, I am very concerned about the, and EFF is very concerned, about the risks connected to

the collection of biometric data like face prints that can't be replaced.

If I lose my driver's license, I get a new driver's license.

I lose my social security or my license plate gets out, I can replace those things.

I can't replace my face.

And the risk of government use of face recognition technology.

So far, I...

outweighs any benefit.

The way that it will chill our ability to engage in protests, to engage in free speech, to be able to associate with freely and to

search new ideas, healthcare, the risk that we'll be able to document like where we go into healthcare, how we move around the city, is considerable.

There's no way to separate that risk from government use of the technology.

I think Illinois has a good model on how we can respond to private use of the technology.

You know, we definitely don't want to be in a situation where people are being persuaded or otherwise not being informed about the way that they're

biometric data is being collected.

So by making sure that we have that the only time that that, but we also want to make sure that researchers are still be able to use the technology.

The ACLU years ago used face recognition on a number of Congress people and they built a, and was able to show how it was

how easily it misidentified people, especially black, brown folks, women, older folks.

And so that kind of research and use can be really helpful.

But we need to make sure.

So how do we protect people from the harms but still allow that research and other consensual use to be done?

And I think, again, that model of making sure that people have informed, written consent about how the technology is being used and how the data is going to be stored and that they can only be used for the ways that have been explicitly approved by the individual whose

data is being collected is a way that we can make sure.

sure that people are, that we can mitigate the risk and it is only used in ways that people are very, are in an informed, consensual way agreeing to.

Thank you all.

Councilmember Maloney.