In the News

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) from Los Angeles serves as the committee vice-chair and became interested in algorithmic bias after seeing a SXSW tech panel in 2017 about a lack of diversity in tech leading to inherently biased systems. But what really shook Gomez into action, he said, was being labeled a criminal by Amazon’s Rekognition in a test by the ACLU in 2018. At the time, Rekognition was roughly twice as likely to label a member of Congress a criminal if they were a person of color rather than white.
Gomez spoke with VentureBeat this week about next steps for facial recognition regulation in Congress, difficulties he and his staff have encountered trying to get answers from Amazon, and the impact on facial recognition regulation of protests in thousands of cities across the nation since the death of George Floyd.