UPDATE (WKOW) -- The Madison Common Council banned city departments, including police, from using facial recognition software.
During a meeting on Tuesday night, the council voted 17-2 to approve a new ordinance that prohibits city agencies, departments and divisions from using facial recognition technology.
Critics see the technology as an infringement on privacy rights that could lead to a dystopic surveillance state while supporters see it as a valuable tool to fight crime.
MADISON (WKOW) -- At its meeting on Tuesday, the Madison Common Council will consider whether to ban city departments, including police, from using facial recognition software with a few exceptions.
The ordinance, which was referenced to the council by the Public Safety Review Committee, would allow police to use facial recognition software only when identifying victims of human trafficking or child pornography.
Facial recognition is a broad category of different software programs that analyze an image of a human face and tries to match that picture to the name of a person stored in a database.
The software has a broad range of uses, especially in law enforcement.
Critics see the technology as an infringement on privacy rights that could lead to a dystopic surveillance state while supporters see it as a valuable tool to fight crime.
At the Nov. 18 meeting of the Public Safety Review Committee, Madison's acting police chief, Vic Wahl, said that his department currently only uses the technology in a capacity required by federal law to help identify victims of human trafficking and child pornography.
Over 100 members of the public voiced their support for the proposed ordinance at the meeting, with 12 saying they opposed the measure in some fashion.
Wahl pushed the committee to allow for more uses of facial recognition software in the future.
Committee members expressed concerns about employing the technology to identify suspects who may have committed crimes, claiming that facial recognition software programs can be innaccurate and have racial biases.
Wahl said that he anticipated the technology would improve to a point that it could be used to generate leads in investigations, comparing it to improvements in DNA matching. He said the department would make it their policy to treat facial recognition software the same as a tip from a member of the public, meaning that they would not make arrests based only on what the software concluded.
Wahl and Det. Sgt. Julie Johnson claimed that the technology had allowed the department to make arrests in human trafficking cases, including those involving children. When asked to provide statistics by a committee member, Johnson said she did not have the numbers on hand but could follow up to provide them.
Ultimately, the committee recommended the ordinance to the Common Council after making tweaks to the language to clarify the exemptions.
The Madison Common Council will consider the ordinance at its meeting on Tuesday which kicks off at 6:30 p.m.
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