Microsoft Wants Rules for Facial Recognition--Just Not These

In December, Microsoft President Brad Smith urged lawmakers to set rules on facial-recognition technology to prevent a privacy-threatening "race to the bottom." Now the company has joined a legislative fight in its home state against rules it says would be too restrictive. Microsoft is pushing back on a bill sponsored by a bipartisan group of Washington state lawmakers that would ban local and state government from using facial recognition until certain conditions are met, including a report by the state attorney general certifying that systems in use are equally accurate for people of differing races, skin tones, ethnicities, genders, or age. Microsoft has endorsed a different bipartisan privacy bill, modeled on European data laws. It contains less restrictive facial recognition rules, which closely mirror Smith's proposals from December.