A city’s push for facial recognition on public buses ignites debate over security and privacy

Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are preparing to equip some public buses with cameras with facial recognition software capable of identifying passengers who appear on a list of banned riders or missing persons. Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for tapping the AI-powered software on a U.S. public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicenter of a fierce debate over whether the safety benefits of artificial intelligence are worth the privacy costs. "The idea of running face recognition on a camera that is pointed at live spaces in public is a line that until recently has never really been crossed in the last 25 years," said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology at the American Civil Liberties Union. The state of Missouri declined to help fund the project as expected due to concerns with the facial recognition component. Still, the city is pushing ahead with local and federal money, said Tyler Means, chief mobility and strategy officer at the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. "Privacy is always a tricky thing," Means said. "We've always had cameras on our buses. It's just new technology. I think in time it'll smooth over and people will realize, 'Well, it didn't really feel any different.'" SafeSpace Global, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company partnering with Kansas City to run the cameras, started using live facial recognition years ago to alert nursing homes when residents left the building, then brought the technology to correctional institutions and schools. Kansas City's buses represent the company's inaugural venture in transportation. Images captured by cameras aboard the buses would immediately be checked against any active alerts generated when a missing person, banned rider, or someone on a law enforcement watch list designated by the transportation authority is identified. If no match or safety issue is detected, the facial data won't be retained. After the buses return to the depot, the transportation authority would archive the regular video footage on a local server for up to five years. This article was provided by The Associated Press.