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A growing debate over facial recognition continues this week as Congress holds it’s second hearing Tuesday and as some New York schools plan to implement the technology to improve safety. California has been an adamant opponent against the technology, and now a Los Angeles congressman is leading the fight against it. “First, facial recognition is something that’s been around for a number of years,” said Congressman Jimmy Gomez, who represents the heart of Los Angeles. Gomez said the tech has been growing dangerously. “Nobody knows anything and nobody really knows,” said Gomez. "Like how accurate or not accurate it actually is.” Gomez said his eyes were open when the ACLU ran matches between members of Congress and criminals. Gomez and over 25 others lawmakers were falsely matched with felons. “You know people can lose their lives if they get pulled over by the police thinking that they are that a violent felon,” said Gomez. “Imagine that, you get pulled over thinking you’re somebody else, you make one wrong move, well, it can cost you you’re life.”  But despite Gomez’s ongoing efforts, facial recognition is moving forward. This week New York public schools, in the Lockport school district, plan to implement their pilot facial recognition program on students and faculty as a way to identify people who shouldn’t be in their school.  “San Francisco just voted to ban it,” said Gomez. “I know that the California legislature has a bill on prohibiting the use of law-enforcement from using the technology.” On top of that, a major online retailer, Amazon recently rejected proposals to curb it’s recognition service. Amazon is using it for anything from simple authentication to government and humanitarian uses, like rescuing human trafficking victims.  “I think Amazon has a problem on their hands. I think they really don’t know, that this is percolating out there,” said Gomez. Now members on Capitol Hill are heading into their second hearing. The first gained substantial bipartisan support for limiting or completely stopping the use in the law enforcement field with Republican Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who said this issue is serving as a sweet spot for all lawmakers to agree upon. Gomez said this just shows how Congress has their work cut out in front of them.  “This is not just liberal Democrats,” said Gomez. “You have tea party Republicans, liberals and everybody in between that knows that this is a problem.” At the first hearing, Gomez received signatures from dozens of supporters.

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