Thank you very much.
Welcome to all the guests.
Mr. McSorley, in some of the preliminary research that I have conducted on the brittleness and inconsistencies of facial recognition technology, I've heard it called the modern-day phrenology. Luke Stark equates facial recognition to the plutonium of AI. He states that:
...facial recognition technologies, by virtue of the way they work at a technical level, have insurmountable flaws connected to the way they schematize human faces. These flaws both create and reinforce discredited categorizations around gender and race, with socially toxic effects. The second [point] is [that] in light of these core flaws, the risks of these technologies vastly outweigh the benefits, in a way that's reminiscent of hazardous nuclear technologies.
They use that metaphor to say that it, “simply [by] being designed and built, is intrinsically socially toxic, regardless of the intentions of its makers”.
In July 2020 the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group co-signed a letter with OpenMedia asking for the federal government to enact a ban on facial recognition surveillance from the federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Through you, Mr. Chair, to Mr. McSorley, given the inconsistencies, the brittleness and the surveillance capitalism of third parties—