Montana lawmakers mull limiting use of facial recognition

Montana state lawmakers this week discussed the possibility of the rural state following the lead of communities like King County, Washington, and San Francisco, which have in recent years issued outright bans on facial recognition technology. 

Montana’s Economic Affairs Interim Committee on Tuesday continued a months-long discussion about how facial recognition technology, which has grown increasingly scrutinized in recent years, should be regulated in Big Sky Country. The committee reviewed one draft bill that would prohibit all state and local government agencies throughout Montana from using facial recognition systems, allowing for some exceptions, such as the investigation of certain high-level offenses and missing-persons searches.

The legislation would also require facial recognition vendors to routinely destroy the data they collect, though it would leave in tact some of the state’s existing arrangements. The Montana Department of Justice, Department of Corrections and Department of Labor and Industry would be allowed exemptions for their current facial-recognition contracts.

The state’s Motor Vehicle Division uses technology from Idemia to monitor for identity theft among driver’s license applicants, and Montana’s labor department is among those using ID.me to limit unemployment insurance fraud. Privacy advocates have taken aim at ID.me in recent months, prompting some government agencies, including the IRS, to stop using the company’s services.

Massachusetts’ unemployment agency in February dropped its use of ID.me’s facial recognition service for identity verification, but continued using the service’s other features. More than two dozen other states also use ID.me for identity verification.

Facial recognition continues to deployed or banned in other locales, revealing a lack of consensus among government leaders on the ethics of the technology itself and the companies peddling it. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell earlier this year pushed for her city to reverse its 2020 ban, citing a need to equip law enforcement with the most effective technology available.

Some Montana lawmakers, such as Rep. Katie Sullivan, a Democrat, said they want to strike a balance between assisting law enforcement and respecting personal privacy. Sullivan, who last year sponsored a study of facial-recognition technology, said this latest proposal is “straddling the fence” between privacy and criminal justice.

Others are less sure.

“Are we willing to give up our freedom for that safety, for the state of Montana?” said Rep. Mark Noland, a Republican, KTVH reported. “I want the state of Montana to be different than the rest of the states. We don’t need this.”

Montana legislators have spent the past several months talking with industry experts about the technology. E.J. Redding on Tuesday reportedly spoke on behalf of Clearview AI in Helena, noting that while his company, which operates one of the world’s largest facial-recognition databases, doesn’t currently operate in Montana, it will be monitoring the legislature. Sullivan and other lawmakers are planning to issue a report of final recommendations to the full state legislature in 2023.

And while privacy experts fight the unfettered use of facial recognition systems by law enforcement, the technology could find alternate uses. Researchers at Kansas State University have used facial recognition to track cattle, and in Montana, which has a thriving agriculture industry, there are some 2.6 million head of beef cattle, outnumbering humans more than two-to-one.