Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are preparing to equip cameras on some public buses with facial recognition software capable of identifying passengers who appear on a list of banned riders or missing persons, the Kansas City Transportation Authority’s chief mobility and strategy officer, Tyler Means, confirmed.
Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for the use of the AI-powered software on a U.S. public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicenter of a 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 on 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 because of concerns about the facial recognition component, according to Means. Still, the city is pushing ahead with local and federal money, Means said.
“Privacy is always a tricky thing,” Means told the Associated Press. “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.’” The Kansas City Transportation Authority is proceeding with the plan using a combination of local and federal funding.