DOJ should investigate whether law enforcement is violating civil rights by using facial identification technology (see 1807310047) like Amazon’s controversial Rekognition, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., wrote Civil Rights Division acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore Wednesday. “A growing body of evidence suggests that these technologies have the potential to exacerbate and entrench existing policing disparities along racial lines.” Thursday, DOJ didn’t comment.

The FTC approved Entertainment Software Rating Board-proposed changes to a self-regulatory program on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (see 1805070041), the agency announced Tuesday. ESRB proposed changing the definition of “personal information and data,” based on new commission guidance on audio recording collection. Commissioners 5-0 incorporated some privacy concerns from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Center for Digital Democracy and Electronic Privacy Information Center, which proposed alterations. For example, the first two groups proposed the FTC “include language that would make it a requirement -- instead of a suggestion -- to limit collection of ‘personal information and data,’” the agency said.

Consumer, civil liberties and privacy groups accused the tech industry of attempting to significantly weaken consumer privacy protections included in a recently passed California bill. In a Monday letter to state legislators, the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and others accused industry groups of trying to “fundamentally water down the [California Consumer Privacy Act’s] privacy protections” via their separate Aug. 6 letter to legislators. Internet Association, NetChoice, Software & Information Industry Association, CTA and Consumer Data Industry Association were among those signing that missive. Monday’s letter opposed the industry proposal to remove consumers’ “ability to access specific pieces of their personal information.” The groups raised several other issues about industry’s proposal, including: removing “the requirement that data be provided in a readily useable format,” limiting definition for personal information, weakening protections for minors and making a consumer opt-out process “needlessly complicated.”

Without specifically naming Facebook or Google, Apple tried to distance itself from the online platforms Tuesday, telling House lawmakers “the customer is not our product.” Apple’s business model “does not depend on collecting vast amounts of personally identifiable information to enrich targeted profiles marketed to advertising,” Apple Director-Federal Government Affairs Timothy Powderly wrote House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. The letter was a response to a July 9 query (see 1807090037) to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Larry Page from Walden and Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Gregg Harper, R-Miss.; and Bob Latta, R-Ohio. The lawmakers accused Apple of collecting “non-triggered” user audio from mobile devices without disclosing the practice to users, and Google of inappropriately scraping email data. “We believe privacy is a fundamental human right and purposely design our products and services to minimize our collection of customer data,” Powderly wrote. “When we do collect data, we're transparent about it and work to disassociate it from the user.”

Democracy for America and RootsAction.org joined Freedom from Facebook, a campaign urging the FTC to break up Facebook’s “monopoly” (see 1805210051 and 1807090014). The Open Markets Institute, Public Citizen, Demand Progress, the Content Creators Coalition and the Communications Workers of America previously joined. “It’s absolutely critical that the FTC responds to the national Facebook privacy crisis by breaking up the company, recognizing its violation of its consent decree, and imposing strong privacy rules on the Facebook platform,” said Democracy for America Chairman Jim Dean Tuesday. The FTC didn’t comment.

GAO should study commercial and government use of facial recognition (see 1807300045) to identify potential abuses, said Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; and Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., Tuesday: “These technologies raise serious concerns about individual privacy rights and the disparate treatment of minority and immigrant communities.” They asked the agency to determine what safeguards ensure the technology isn't abused. The American Civil Liberties Union claimed Amazon’s Rekognition, used by law enforcement, is flawed and racially biased. The request will go through GAO’s formal review process, which usually takes a few weeks, emailed a spokesman.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s “flawed” methodology in criticizing Amazon’s Rekognition for racial bias was a setback for legitimate use of facial identification (see 1807270040), blogged Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Vice President Daniel Castro and Research Assistant Michael McLaughlin Monday. “It is unclear what error rate and level of bias groups such as the ACLU are willing to accept,” they wrote. “The standard should not be perfection, but rather better than the rates humans achieve today. And by that metric, facial recognition technology is clearly a positive step forward.” Amazon says ACLU’s results could be improved by following best practices on boosting confidence thresholds from 80 to 95 percent.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; and Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote 39 federal law enforcement agencies Friday asking for details about use of Amazon’s Rekognition, the facial identification technology criticized for racial bias (see 1807260037). The lawmakers said the technology is attractive to police, but “comes with inherent risks, including the compromising of Americans’ right to privacy, as well as racial and gender bias." The FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secret Service and U.S. Capitol Police were among those queried. Amazon Thursday questioned the methodology of the American Civil Liberties Union, which alleged racial bias.

Amazon’s facial identification product Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress with criminal mug shots, and lawmakers of color were disproportionately mismatched, said the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Thursday. They included six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which recently wrote CEO Jeff Bezos. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., was misidentified in a database of 25,000 public arrest photos. “Congress should press for a federal moratorium on the use of face surveillance until its harms, particularly to vulnerable communities, are fully considered,” said ACLU Legislative Counsel Neema Singh Guliani. An Amazon spokesperson emailed that the results could probably be improved by following best practices on setting the confidence thresholds used in the test, from 80 percent confidence to 95 percent. “In real world scenarios, Amazon Rekognition is almost exclusively used to help narrow the field and allow humans to expeditiously review and consider options using their judgement [sic] (and not to make fully autonomous decisions), where it can help find lost children, restrict human trafficking, or prevent crimes,” said the spokesperson. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., wrote Bezos Thursday on “serious concerns … about the dangers facial recognition can pose to privacy and civil rights, especially when it is used as a tool of government surveillance.”

An FCC-designated database of reassigned phone numbers, backed with safe harbor protections for those using it, would reduce the unwanted communications consumers get and the time and effort wasted by businesses mistakenly calling or texting those numbers, Comcast told aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr, said a docket 17-59 filing, posted Thursday. The meeting was the latest Comcast support for the reassigned number database proposal (see 1807110022 and 1806080047).