Resident urges Portland to fast-track a ban on nonconsensual facial-biometric features in doorbell cameras
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Summary
A Portland resident urged the council to adopt consent requirements for facial-biometric features in doorbell cameras after a companywide feature rollout; the commenter offered draft language from other jurisdictions and asked the council to act before the feature starts in December.
A Portland resident told the council on Monday that the city should adopt a local law requiring companies to obtain consent before activating facial-biometric features in doorbell cameras.
Joey Brunell said that Ring, an Amazon-owned company, will activate a "familiar faces" feature in December that, he said, will identify and log faces seen by doorbell cameras. "What this innocuous sounding feature does is track, record, analyze, and identify the faces of anyone who walks into view of that camera 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," Brunell said during public comment. He urged the council to fast-track language similar to laws passed in Texas and Illinois and pointed to Portland, Oregon’s consent rules as an available model.
Brunell said Ring’s data collection could be used for advertising or by "rogue federal agencies," and that default activation with opt-out places an unacceptable privacy burden on residents. He offered to provide draft ordinance language from other jurisdictions to staff and to the sustainability and transportation committee.
Corina Napier, a Portland Climate Action Team steering-committee member, also raised the Ring-camera privacy concern and thanked the council for considering both environmental and privacy issues.
What’s next: The commenter said he would email committee members and staff with draft language; no council action or vote on biometric policy occurred at this workshop.
