Technology

Civil rights groups press NBA to ban facial recognition at arenas

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October 21, 2020

Days after the close of the 2020 baskteball season, civil rights groups are launching a campaign to pressure the NBA to protect fans, players and staff by banning facial recognition from use at arenas, according to a press release.

Fight for the Future and MediaJustice have launched BanFacialRecognition.com/nba to gather grassroots pressure to ensure that plans for the 2021 season do not include this technology that the groups claim is racially biased, infringes on privacy and would force those attending games to be a part of a massive surveillance system.

"We've seen this year that the NBA cares about safety, but they need to double down on this commitment moving forward by banning facial recognition," Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director at Fight for the Future, said in a prepared statement. "This is a critical moment because conversations are happening right now about how to get people back to games next year. Facial recognition companies are trying to weasel their way into arenas by calling their tools safe and touch free."

The NBA faced backlash last year for using Clearview, a facial recognition tool that the organizations claim has scraped billions of images from social media and other sites across the internet without consent. At the time, an NBA spokesperson said it was just a test and that they were not clients of Clearview.

Facial recognition has also been used at Madison Square Garden and by the Dallas Mavericks.

The groups have also run campaigns to ban use of facial recognition at music festivals, schools and as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.