Thirteen cameras installed, and in the process of being installed, in downtown Lakeland are equipped with facial recognition technology.
The leader of the public entity that purchased them, the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority, said it is a matter of public safety. However facial recognition technology has not been publicly talked about until now.
“We love our visitors. We want everyone to be safe,” said Julie Townsend, executive director of the LDDA, which advocates for downtown businesses.
Townsend said the technology is “hyper-focused” on three specific people right now, considered “persons of interest.”
“If we have a photo of a person that we have identified as a person of interest, we can upload that to the system, and then when that person is found on a camera throughout the district, it’ll send us an alert,” said Townsend.
That alert goes to the LDDA clean and safe manager Tony Davila and Lakeland police officers who patrol downtown, Davila said.
The three “persons of interest” have been trespassed several times at local businesses, threatened staff, and/or been trespassed at the farmer’s market.
“This is really a five-alarm fire for privacy rights,” said Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
He calls facial recognition cameras ‘dangerous.’
“This is a technology that has enormous potential to harm our basic rights to privacy and liberty in a free society and government entities should not be monkeying around in this way,” he said.
Wessler said other jurisdictions in the country have rejected this kind of technology because of privacy concerns.
Wessler said the ACLU will look into the situation in Lakeland.
The cameras, which cost $115,000, should be fully installed by the end of April.