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Bipartisan bill calls for legislative oversight for facial recognition tech

March 15, 2019

Hawaiian Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat, and Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, a Republican, recently introduced a bill called the Commercial Facial Recognition Privacy Act. This bill would require companies to inform customers about any use of facial recognition and not share recognition data without obtaining customer consent, according to a report by Tech Crunch.

Microsoft has endorsed the bipartisan bill and its president Brad Smith has called for regulations of facial recognition technology. The senators said the bill will help ensure responsible implementation of facial recognition technology.

"Our faces are our identities. They’re personal. So the responsibility is on companies to ask people for their permission before they track and analyze their faces," Schatz said. "Our bill makes sure that people are given the information and —more importantly — the control over how their data is shared with companies using facial recognition technology."