Item Coversheet


Town of Arlington, Massachusetts


Article 13
Warrant Article Title:
BYLAW AMENDMENT/PROHIBIT THE USE OF FACE SURVEILLANCE 
Warrant Article Text:

To see if the Town will vote to amend Title I of the Town Bylaws to prohibit the use of face surveillance by the Town of Arlington, including departments and officials; or take any action related thereto.


Requested by:

(Inserted at the request of Ezra Fischer and ten registered voters)

Report Excerpt:

The Select Board joins the resident petitioners in their    concern about the abuse of facial recognition technologies to gather inappropriate information from and about members of the public. The recently enacted Chapter 253 of the Acts of 2020 – the Justice, Equity, and Accountability in Law Enforcement Act (“JEALE” Act) for the first time in Massachusetts regulates law enforcement personnel’s use of computerized facial recognition searches for the purpose of identifying “unidentified persons,” but does not cover all the necessary ground in this body’s opinion, including passive use of such technologies, use of such technologies to monitor “known” persons, or use of such technologies by non-law enforcement entities.

 

The JEALE Act also established a Special Commission to Evaluate Government Use of Facial Recognition Technology in the Commonwealth, which released a 173 page report outlining its concerns and recommendations on March 14, 2022. The petitioners and the Select Board agree that it is important to track the progress of action on those recommendations in the immediate future. It is also essential to acknowledge that the Town does not now and has no plans to utilize facial recognition technology. Nonetheless, the Select Board believes that the instant resolution affirms the importance of prohibiting the use of this technology both externally and internally in a manner that avoids potential issues of pre-emption by state law and is consistent with the discretion invested in the Town Manager and department heads under our separation of powers within the Town Manager Act.

Vote Language:

VOTED:  That Town Meeting hereby resolves as follows:

“A Resolution that Government use of Face Surveillance should be  Further  Limited  in Order to Conform with Our Values”

WHEREAS:

A.      Facial recognition technology has been proven to be worse at identifying people of color and women and even worse at identifying women of color. This biased inaccuracy has already led to multiple cases of false arrest leading to lawsuits against municipalities; AND

 B.      The rights of free speech and assembly are among our most prized and government use of face surveillance has a chilling effect on free exercise of these rights; AND

 C.      Widespread government use of face surveillance would violate basic expectations of privacy and our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures; AND

 D.    The people disproportionately harmed when government surveillance power expands are the segments of our population uniquely vulnerable to any kind of poorly wielded government power: LGBT+, homeless people, people with mental illnesses, people of color, and of course the many people who embody more than one of those categories; AND

 E.     The current state law pertaining to this issue (M.G.L. Ch. 6, Section 220) has several gaps:

 

a.   By regulating only the use of facial recognition by law enforcement, it allows other branches of government free reign to use face surveillance however they wish;

b.   It requires only a court order to perform a facial recognition search, which is a lower standard of proof than a warrant; and

c.   It defines both facial recognition and facial recognition search but then only legislates the use of facial recognition search. This means that while the limited application of taking an unidentified image and using software to identify it is regulated, there’s nothing to prevent any part of government, including law enforcement from doing facial recognition in their day-to-day operations.

 

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED BY TOWN MEETING OF THE TOWN OF ARLINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS:

1. Town Meeting calls upon our state representatives to promptly follow the recommendations of the Special Commission to Evaluate Government Use of Facial Recognition Technology in the Commonwealth including amending the current state law to:

 

a.       both limit use of facial recognition search to felony cases and by requiring a warrant based on probable cause with the exception of responding to emergency situations or identifying a deceased person; and

 

b.       ban the use of face recognition for surveillance, tracking, and emotion recognition; AND

 

2.   We further ask that our state representatives push for additional legislation to address the non-law enforcement government use of this technology; AND

3.    We also use this resolution to make our expectations of our own town government clear. We expect that the only use of facial recognition technology by the Town of Arlington be that which is explicitly provided for in state law.

(5 – 0)

Additional Materials:
Select Board Report