IBM announced on Monday it would stop selling "general purpose IBMfacial recognition or analysis software" and called for a "national dialogue" around the issue of whether facial recognition software should be used by law enforcement.- The increasing use of facial recognition by law enforcement and government agencies both in the US and more widely has prompted concerns around privacy, discrimination, and misidentification.
- A researcher who specializes in IBM at Privacy International told Business Insider that ambiguity around what "general purpose" software means could leave the company wiggle-room to pursue custom-build facial recognition software for specific clients.
- Civil rights organization Mijente also highlighted the "general purpose" line in IBM's statement.
On Monday IBM made an unexpected announcement. It announced it will no longer sell facial recognition software. Sort of.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced the company's change of heart in a letter to Democratic senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.
In the letter, he said IBM wants to initiate a "national dialogue" on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement.
"IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms," Krishna wrote.
The ethics of facial recognition have been brought back into the spotlight by the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Several major US tech firms sell facial recognition software to police forces and government agencies as a way of locating suspects or other individuals.
Experts have long warned that growing use of facial recognition by, for example, law enforcement would disproportionately affect people of color and lead to further over-policing and oppression of their communities.
IBM's stance came as good news to many AI researchers and civil rights unions who have called for a ban on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement.
IBM is not the biggest player in the facial recognition market, but it is a big and influential one nonetheless, and its decision was seen as something that could galvanize other tech companies into reconsidering their own contracts with police.
"Your turn, Amazon and Microsoft," the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted.
https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1270167989862760448?s=20IBM left itself wiggle room by saying it was ruling out "general purpose" software
Two words in IBM's announcement suggest it has left itself some wiggle room to continue developing facial recognition tech in future.
"IBM no longer offers general purpose IBM facial recognition or analysis software," Krishna's letter reads (emphasis ours).
Eva Blum-Dumontet, a senior researcher at Privacy International who has studied IBM for four years, picked up on the term "general purpose."
"We'll have to see what that means in practice. It's worth bearing in mind that a lot of the work IBM does is actually customized work for their customers, so it's possible we're not seeing the end of IBM doing facial recognition at all, they're just changing the label," she said.
"I'm not saying for sure, we'll have to see exactly in the future what happens, but I think the qualification they have added is definitely worth keeping in mind," she added.
Facial recognition has made up a part of surveillance tech packages which IBM markets to governments, both on a local and national level.
As reported by The Intercept, IBM sold video surveillance tech to Rodrigo Duterte's regime in the Philippines. Although it's not clear whether facial recognition software was part of that package, The Intercept found evidence of IBM marketing its facial recognition tool Face Capture to the Philippine government in 2015.
Civil rights organization Mijente referenced the Philippine government and also picked up on the term "general purpose."
"Are they still going to develop customized facial recognition technology for certain clients? We saw how their [IBM's] facial recognition tech was used in the Philippines by the police to hunt down members of the public and ultimately kill people extrajudicially," said Jacinta Gonzalez, senior campaign director at Mijente.
IBM declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider on whether it would stop developing customized facial recognition.
Mijente has more questions it wants answered about IBM's decision. "IBM specifically calls out the use of this tech by domestic law enforcement agencies. We want to know are they still selling this tech to other agencies such as CBP [Customs and Border Patrol]?"
Gonzalez questioned whether private companies should have the final say over how or whether facial recognition is deployed.
"We ask this question because lobbyists from IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and many others are involved in drafting regulation all around the world about how facial technology will be used. We reject their involvement in this process because we know they will write rules that enable these companies to profit on our backs, and we call on lawmakers to listen to the people who are being directly impacted by facial recognition first and foremost," she said.
IBM's announcement is still a move in the right direction
Blum-Dumontet said IBM's announcement did not fill her with confidence. "I found this a very cynical reaction on behalf of IBM. What we see here is a company trying to redeem themselves," she said.
For some experts though, no matter how cynically motivated or hedged the announcement, it's still a move in the right direction.
Dr. Chris Gilliard, an expert on surveillance and privacy at the Digital Pedagogy Lab, told Business Insider that the timing of IBM's decision was indicative that activism is having an effect.
"I'm hard-pressed to believe that this is something that IBM would have just done anyway. I think the environment of activists and scholars and journalists, and even the employees of companies, I think that their work has made a difference," he said.
Employees at Amazon have called on their company to sever its police contracts, and over 250 Microsoft employees published an open letter on Tuesday demanding their company do the same.
"Even at my most cynical, they are still stepping back," Gilliard added. "That a major chess piece is off the board, is a good thing."
Dr Nakeema Stefflbauer, a privacy policy expert, said the decision felt like a "definite turning point" that could motivate lawmakers.
"I hope this is a strong signal to the EU Parliament and other bodies still deciding whether to implement facial recognition in public or law enforcement context," she said.
Mutale Nkonde, an AI policy advisor, voiced a similar hope for other tech companies. Nkonde referenced IBM's historical involvement with Nazi Germany in the 20th century whereby the firm supplied punch cards which were used to count people sent to the concentration camps.
"Banning facial recognition research represents a major movement from their history, in which they were one of the world's major corporate human rights abusers," said Nkonde. "My hope is this decision will encourage Google, Amazon, Clearview AI and others to do the same."