Gizmodo: Milwaukee Police Propose Trading Millions of Mugshots for Free Facial Recognition Access

The United States has an established history of skirting ethics and exploiting marginalized communities, especially in the name of advancing technology. Hello, Tuskegee. This deal would simply continue that legacy in a digital context. As Jeramie Scott, Senior Counsel at EPIC, told Gizmodo via email, “The irony here is that the Milwaukee police are considering offering millions of mugshots that most likely are disproportionately of people of color in order to train a surveillance technology that will likely be used disproportionately on people of color.” Furthermore, Scott noted that doing so would “exacerbat[e] the historical racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.” 

Comprehensive federal regulation on facial recognition is unlikely to come anytime soon. Although Wisconsin’s capital, Madison, banned the technology in 2020, the state itself has none either, and Milwaukee also doesn’t regulate the police department’s existing surveillance technology. In Scott’s eyes, “The safest thing to do would be to not go forward with this deal and for the Milwaukee police to refrain from using the technology, particularly when there are no laws in place to strictly limit its use and provide meaningful safeguards.” 

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