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As facial recognition technology spreads, people who don't want to use it are often told they can just opt out. That's not always possible if the system is used at a workplace. Now a union is saying no, and it's not just any union. As NPR's Martin Kaste reports, it's the Las Vegas police who don't want their faces in the system when they work at National Football League games.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: The NFL is expanding its use of facial recognition at stadiums - or facial authentication, as it prefers to call it. Here's a promotional video from the company running the system called Wicket.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Instead of long lines and manual barcode scanning, Wicket allows fans to just walk up, show their face and walk in.
KASTE: For fans, this is optional, but it's now being required for people working inside some of the stadiums. At the stadium where the Las Vegas Raiders play, that will now include the police working security. But they're saying no.
STEVE GRAMMAS: We have absolutely no assignments that we work where we turn over any biometric data or photos of our officers.
KASTE: That's Steve Grammas, president of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association. Officers request to work at football games, and their overtime is paid by the team. But Grammas says this season, they've hit an impasse with the NFL because the league is requiring photos, personal data and waivers.
GRAMMAS: They also outlined in their agreement that said we can give it to our vendors or friends of the NFL. And so we don't know who those people are. We don't know what they're going to do with it, and we don't know why they need to have it.
KASTE: Privacy experts say the cops are right to worry. Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy and Technology points to the example of Clearview AI. That's the facial recognition service that's used by many police departments to ID suspects. And Clearview relies on photos that come from other sources.
JAKE LAPERRUQUE: They operate by scraping individuals' photos off of social media in the billions, without any notification or consent.
KASTE: And Laperruque says once these data are shared, that's that.
LAPERRUQUE: You know, you can always change your password. You can change ID numbers. You can't change your face.
KASTE: The NFL wouldn't answer questions for this story, but it did send NPR a statement saying, quote, "we've had ongoing productive conversations," unquote, with Las Vegas police. And it says it aims to, quote, "create the safest game day environment possible." Steve Grammas says the NFL is going to have to try and figure something out because he says the police are not going to bend on this.
Martin Kaste, NPR News.
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