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NYC seeks to curb facial recognition technology in homes and businesses

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One bill would give tenants an out from the invasive technology

A white camera juts out from the side of a building, behind it is a row of apartment building windows.
New legislation would regulate landlords and businesses using facial recognition software and other biometric data systems.
Ramin Talaie/Getty Images

A new City Council bill would give residents an out to invasive facial recognition technology and other biometric data collection that landlords are increasingly turning to as locks and security systems.

The KEYS (keep entry to your home surveillance-free) Act, introduced by Brooklyn Councilmember Brad Lander, seeks to force landlords to provide tenants with traditional metal keys to enter their buildings and apartments. The measure would prevent building owners from mandating tenants use facial recognition, biometric scanning, or any other smart-key technology to access their homes.

“No one should be required to have their movements tracked just to enter their own home, but that is the reality that we are starting to face,” Lander said at a Monday Council oversight hearing on regulating such technology in residential and commercial properties.

Two other bills discussed Monday would further regulate the use of facial recognition and biometric software by landlords and businesses. One measure would require building owners who use biometric technology to register with the city, and another would require businesses to notify customers if they are collecting their biometric data, such as facial and iris scans or fingerprints.

The bills come amid a wave of public and legislative pushback to facial recognition technology that studies have show has a higher error rate for accurately identifying people of color and women. In New York City, the legislation is a culmination of mounting privacy and civil liberty concerns. Lander’s bill was, in part, galvanized by rent-stabilized tenants at the Atlantic Plaza Towers in Brownsville where private landlord Nelson Management Group aims to install a facial recognition security system in the complex.

Residents and local elected officials were quick to rail against the system. In May, 134 tenants at the complex filed a challenge to the state’s Homes and Community Renewal department, urging the agency block the keyless system on privacy and ethical grounds. Such technology is not unprecedented in New York City, but the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) does not keep track of buildings that use biometric data collection, and therefor, has no data on how pervasive the technology already is in the five boroughs.

The Legal Services NYC’s Tenant Rights Coalition, which is representing the Atlantic Plaza Towers tenants, lauded the KEYS Act but says that regulators must go further.

“We are glad our City Council is paying attention to the use of facial recognition entry systems in residential spaces, but tenants need additional protections from the many risks involved in biometrics data collection,” said Samar Katnani, an attorney with Legal Services. “The tenants we work with are calling for a ban on facial recognition technology in residential spaces.”

Lander’s bill does not prevent landlords from using facial recognition, though the Brooklyn Councilmember said he would be open to an outright ban on the technology.

Tenants who have had little choice but to endure the technology at one Two Bridges affordable housing complex say the system is prone to bugs and is unreliable.

“Many tenants have complained that the technology does not work,” said Christina Zhang, who co-chairs the Knickerbocker Village tenant’s association. “You’re doing this dance to get the camera to recognize you.”

The KEYS Act, Lander says, would give tenants “a right to escape” facial recognition and the collection of other biometric data. This is a sentiment HPD supports “until electronic methods of entry can be proven to not pose safety or privacy concerns,” according to Sarah Mallory, the executive director of government affairs for HPD.

That technology, Mallory stressed at Monday’s hearing, has the potential to be used by landlords to electronically track the movements of residents as a means to target tenants for harassment.

Relying entirely on electric locking mechanisms—whether they collect biometric data or not—also threatens to lock residents in or out of their homes if buildings lose power, according to Mallory.

Similarly, one elderly tenant in Hell’s Kitchen charged that a new keyless system installed by his landlord was too complicated, and feared that his movements would be tracked through the technology. The tenant, along with neighbors, secured the right to physical keys in May after suing the landlord.

Such concerns have prompted state lawmakers to introduce a bill that would ban the use of facial recognition technology, and in Congress, a Brooklyn representative has sought to ban the use of biometric scanning technology in all federally-funded public housing.

Facial recognition technology is already widely used by law enforcement agencies, including the NYPD. In San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville, Massachusetts legislators have banned city agencies, including law enforcement and public housing, from using such technology. Lawmakers in cities across the country are considering similar moves.