Smart City PDX comments to the OSTP biometric information RFI
The US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) requested input from interested parties on past deployments, proposals, pilots, or trials, and current use of biometric technologies for the purposes of identity verification, identification of individuals, and inference of attributes including individual mental and emotional states.
The purpose of this RFI (FR Doc. 2021-21975) is to understand the extent and variety of biometric technologies in past, current, or planned use; the domains in which these technologies are being used; the entities making use of them; current principles, practices, or policies governing their use; and the stakeholders that are, or may be, impacted by their use or regulation.
The Smart City PDX has submitted a document with comments and recommendations collected from internal surveys to city staff and from Portland residents in public events organized in the context of the surveillance technologies policy.
The first four recommendations are:
Use of biometric information must be minimized to those cases where law or regulation requires it, or there is a clear value added to the community and government operations.
The collection of biometric information represents people’s bodies and losing control over this information represents an unnecessary risk. Individuals should have the ability to restrict access to their own biometric information.
The use of biometric information in local government for commercial or social services should be limited to verification (one-to-one) processes rather than to identification (one-to-many).
A risk assessment approach may allow local governments to use specific biometric data or work with trusted vendors for specific cases where this data collection is needed.
Full Smart City PDX comments to the OSTP RFI on biometric information submitted on January 14, 2022 can be downloaded here.
What do you think about the use of biometric information by the local government? Send us your comments to smartcitypdx@portlandoregon.gov.
For more information about the surveillance technologies policy and future events visit the project page: https://www.smartcitypdx.com/surveillance-policy