The Safe Face Pledge: an ethical code of conduct for facial recognition scientists and developers

a post by Cory Doctorow for the Boing Boing blog



The Safe Face Pledge launched last month [December 2018] as a “pledge to mitigate abuse of facial analysis technology”, with four themes:

• “Show Value for Human Life, Dignity, and Rights”;
• “Address Harmful Bias”; 
• “Facilitate Transparency”; and 
• “Embed Commitments into Business Practices” (SAFE).

The full pledge is inspirational and comprehensive, covering bias, secret and discriminatory state surveillance, risking human life, law enforcement abuse, auditing customer compliance, communicating the systems’ workings, and making your legal documents (from vendor contracts to terms of service) reflective of your values.

The pledge’s announcement describes how the UK’s notoriously inaccurate police facial recognition systems are more likely to falsely accuse black people of being a match for a criminal than people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds.

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