Title
Ordinance amending and supplementing the Pittsburgh Code of Ordinances at Title One: Administrative, Article III: Organization, Chapter 116: Department of Public Safety to regulate the use of facial recognition and predictive policing technology.
Body
WHEREAS, as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology's (NIST) mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life; and,
WHEREAS, in 2019, NIST published a report on the performance of facial recognition algorithms across racial, age, and gender demographics finding that there were higher false positives rates in Native American, African American, and Asian populations. They also found false positives to be higher in women than men and elderly and children; and,
WHEREAS, other rigorous studies and real-life examples have shown that many facial recognition and predictive policing technologies are far from perfect, with numerous instances of racial bias and false arrests; and,
WHEREAS, the unregulated use of facial recognition and predictive policing technologies based on algorithmic and computational machine learning and artificial intelligence in public safety risks the perpetuation of bias and a reliance on historically biased data, thereby presenting new possibilities of compounding harm; and
WHEREAS, some of these technologies have the potential to endanger the civil rights and civil liberties of innocent individuals, which means it is incumbent on governments to regulate, scrutinize, and vet these technologies before they can be implemented; and,
WHEREAS, the City of Pittsburgh seeks to provide regulations to safeguard the civil liberties and civil rights of the public prior to the acquisition or use of the technologies; and,
WHEREAS, the inclusion of these regulations to the City of Pittsburgh's Code of O...
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