NBA: Say NO to Facial Recognition
NBA Team Owners and Arenas
With the NBA showing a strong commitment to player and fan safety and racial justice, it is time that they ban facial recognition from their events and arenas. Facial recognition companies are forcefully marketing their racially biased products as snake-oil solutions to COVID-19—the NBA cannot buy these lies.
The league is making plans for next season, and is pushing to get back to “normal,” including having fans back in arenas. These plans must prioritize the safety of everyone—fans, staff, and athletes—and that means they cannot include facial recognition. Facial recognition gathers massive amounts of biometric data in databases that may not be secure, and frequently misidentifies Black and Brown people. These dangerous practices are only some of the reasons why cities across the country are banning the technology entirely.
The NBA already received harsh criticism when it was exposed after testing the notorious Clearview AI. Now is the time for the league and arenas to make a clear commitment to true safety and disavow facial recognition.
Tell the NBA: ban facial recognition in arenas!
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To:
NBA Team Owners and Arenas
From:
[Your Name]
We are calling on you to commit to not using facial recognition in arenas as you develop plans to reopen and bring fans back to games. This technology is the opposite of a safety feature—it will put people in serious danger.
Facial recognition is most notorious for misidentifying people of color—an issue with repercussions that range from inconveniences to arrests and serious threats to safety for Black and Brown people. The biometric data collected is a target for hackers and stalkers. Installing facial recognition in arenas would create a massive surveillance network that would force fans, players, and staff to be constantly watched without consent.
No matter what facial recognition companies say, any convenience or purported safety of their “hands free” systems does not outweigh these risks, and installing a tool of mass surveillance in arenas that will be visited by hundreds of thousands of people puts all of our privacy and rights in danger. The experimental, flawed nature of facial recognition also puts our health in danger. Peddlers of this technology have told The Guardian as recently as August 2020 that a user must “take your mask off” for authentication—underscoring an incompatibility with an airborne pandemic.
We cannot urge you enough to focus on the science, and not fall for the marketing hype. Facial recognition should have no place in the NBA.