‘Never mind’ — Carnegie Mellon after floating facial recognition policy

Carnegie Mellon University officials reportedly have said they have never used facial recognition technology and, after community feedback, have decided not to do so.

CMU, according to the New Pittsburgh Courier, had written a draft policy for the police use of facial recognition surveillance for criminal investigations. The draft was under consideration as recently as July 6.

University officials have said very little about the policy, including what kind of surveillance would be used and what kind of investigations would use the biometrics systems.

The University of Miami allegedly used facial recognition in 2020, allegedly deploying it to identify students protesting the return of in-person classes following remote classes during a Covid surge.

Facial recognition was reportedly used at UM to identify people participating in a die-in. A graduate student who attended the protest told the Miami New Times that she got an email from the school’s dean of students asking that she participate in a video meeting to discuss the protest.

The school said the protest had not been registered but that no one had been disciplined.

A school spokesperson told the New Times that the University does not use facial recognition, but the head of campus police has referred in the past to the use of images from a campus-wide CCTV system with a facial recognition system operated by state police.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  Carnegie Mellon University  |  cctv  |  facial recognition  |  schools  |  video surveillance