Tag: Biometrics

Featured, homelessness, human services, Mayor Durkan, Privacy

Biometric Scans for Homeless Shelter Clients Out, Digital IDs In?
Visual representations of blockchain are hard, OK? At least it’s not an image of a Bitcoin. Photo via Pixabay

Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office confirms that the city will not move forward with biometric scanning of homeless clients seeking shelter and services, after the Human Services Department recommended against the idea in an internal memo. Durkan first asked HSD to look at tracking homeless “customers” using their unique biometric markers, such as fingerprints, last year, as a way of creating “efficiencies” and eliminating the need for clients to keep track of personal documents or scan cards.

“Mayor Durkan believes that streamlining ways for our neighbors experiencing homelessness to securely maintain their personal documents needed to access services is one of the ways we can better serve this vulnerable population, so she asked HSD to evaluate ways to accomplish these goals,” Durkan spokeswoman Kamaria Hightower says. “With her extensive background working on privacy and security issues, Mayor Durkan understands the need for deep collaboration before crafting policies that will impact communities. “

With that decision made, Durkan’s office also released the full memo, which her office previously refused to provide in response to a records request I filed last year. The memo pushes back (gently) against the idea that biometrics are a superior alternative to scan cards—noting, for example, that people don’t actually lose scan cards nearly as often as the city assumed they would. “While there was concern that lost cards would be an issue, most programs have reported that it is not a significant barrier to utilizing the system and loss does not occur as often as anticipated,” the memo says.

More details that were not previously available:

• Switching from scan cards to biometric scanners, such as fingerprint readers, would be expensive. According to the memo, “the cost to switch to biometric finger imaging would include upfront costs of about $100,000 for the server, about $2,000- $5,000 per shelter for hardware and an annual maintenance fee,” compared to the $84,500 it cost to set up the scan card system, plus about $1,200 in one-time costs borne by programs that use the scan cards.

“Conversion to biometrics would require a significant up-front cost as well as ongoing maintenance fees, while the scan card technology has already been paid for and the on-going costs are minimal,” the memo says.

• Biometric technology requires partnering with private companies that may not always cooperate with the city’s demands. San Francisco, the memo says, is about to discontinue fingerprint scanning and end its partnership with a company called Bitfocus because of the company’s “refusal to adapt their [Homeless Management Information System] platform to interface with the scan technology. SF’s workaround was to link the finger imaging data to a separate data base, which is extremely cumbersome and prone to errors leading to minimal use of the technology in most programs,” the memo says. HMIS is the system the county uses to keep track of who clients are and which services they are using; one of the justifications for biometrics is that it helps cities eliminate problems with duplicate data.

• Instead of biometrics, the city may consider non-biometric digital IDs, which allow homeless service providers to access all of a person’s documents at once using a password provided by the person.

An earlier memo on biometrics produced by HSD staff recommended that the city consider low-tech solutions such as expanding the amount of space available for check-in at shelters, remove or reduce ID requirements, and asking shelter workers and clients for their suggestions to improve the check-in process before.

Instead, the final memo recommends that the city look into other high-tech tracking solutions such as digital IDs secured with blockchain technology. The city of Austin, the memo notes, has been experimenting with digital IDs for homeless clients.

The final memo to the mayor’s office also omits some of the concerns included in the earlier memo, such as the fact that “Some people regard biometrics as unnecessary surveillance tools and oversimplified, automated methods that objectify and separate groups of already marginalized people,” and that “use of biometrics at shelters may further reinforce perceptions that shelters are ‘institutional spaces for government intrusion and surveillance of low-income and homeless people.'”

The early memo raised similar concerns about digital IDs, saying that Austin appears to be moving away from this technology. “Early reports have stated that use of this technology has resulted in significant barriers and specifically deters undocumented clients and clients with psychosis from using those services associated with the technology,” the document says.

The newly released memo identifies just two “challenges” with implementing digital IDs, as opposed to biometrics: “Authenticating identity for someone with no existing ID is time consuming to obtain initial records to load into the system,” and “The technological and human capacity to develop, implement, and maintain a digital solution will require resources.” The “challenges” listed for biometrics include the fact that “[a]dvocates may fight implementation” and the potential that fingerprint scans could require a review under the city’s surveillance ordinance.

Featured, homelessness, human services, Mayor Durkan, Privacy

Human Services Department Opposes Biometric Screening for Homeless, But Refuses to Hand Over Memo Saying So

Staffers for the city’s Human Services Department who looked into “biometric” screening of homeless shelter clients last year strongly recommended that the city not move forward with the idea, emails obtained through a public disclosure request reveal. The emails also show that HSD staffers asked the mayor’s office to include their recommendations in the official response to questions I asked about biometrics in December, but they did not..

Last year, as I reported, Durkan directed HSD to look into the possibility of requiring homeless Seattleites to undergo biometric screening—for example, a fingerprint scan—to access shelter. The mayor’s office said mandatory screening was one possible solution to data duplication in the Homeless Management Information System, a database that keeps track of what services people experiencing homelessness are using, and that it would create “efficiencies” as well as better “customer service” for people staying in shelters. Opponents of such screening argue that collecting homeless people’s fingerprints or other biometric data raises significant privacy concerns, and that it will discourage vulnerable people from accessing services.

“The Human Services Department does not recommend converting to biometrics in shelters.  The cultural, social, and legal considerations have not been explored among relevant departments … nor with any potential clients who would use any biometric systems to access shelters.”

Several of the emails the city provided in response to my records request originally included a memo (titled “Shelter Memo”) containing HSD’s rationale for recommending that the city abandon the idea of biometric screening. However, an HSD public disclosure officer removed this memo from the records, claiming it is exempt from disclosure because it “reflects the expression of opinions, recommendations, and possible policy formulations that make up the pre-decisional free flow of opinions and ideas to policymakers, the disclosure of which would harm the ongoing decision making process.” This “deliberative process” exemption is the same exemption HSD used to justify heavily redacting documents about a proposed safe parking lot for people living in their cars. Typically, this exemption is used to withhold early drafts of legislation.

However, the agency did, perhaps inadvertently, provide an email that included a draft memo outlining the reasons HSD opposes biometric screening of homeless clients. It’s unclear how much, if any, of this early memo ended up in HSD’s final shelter memo. The memo begins, “The Human Services Department does not recommend converting to biometrics in shelters.  The cultural, social, and legal considerations have not been explored among relevant departments … nor with any potential clients who would use any biometric systems to access shelters.”

It continues: “Resources indicate that using biometrics at shelters (i.e. fingerprint scans or facial recognition software) will alienate people living outside and/or potentially seeking shelter. This may result in a lower percentage of people using shelter and increase the percentage of people who live outside as opposed to using available indoor shelter.”

“From our perspective at [HSD], we do not consider the loss of scan cards to be such a substantial issue that we believe they outweigh our concerns with the use of biometrics.”

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“Shelter staff will be needed at entry to facilitate fingerprint scans and enroll anyone with cold, burned or otherwise damaged hands or any other struggles or refusal to fingerprint scanning—a potentially higher or increasing percentage of users than anticipated by policy makers,” the memo says.

“Some people regard biometrics as unnecessary surveillance tools and oversimplified, automated methods that objectify and separate groups of already marginalized people. Use of biometrics at shelters may further reinforce perceptions that shelters are ‘institutional spaces for government intrusion and surveillance of low-income and homeless people.'” For example, “[t]he finger scanning method could trigger traumatic memories of people who have previously been fingerprinted.”

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Emails from HSD staffers show a department frustrated by Durkan’s request to quickly study and make recommendations on an idea that many at HSD viewed as highly problematic from the start.

“[F]or everyone’s clarity purposes, we at HSD aren’t advocating for this,” strategic advisor Dusty Olson wrote in a December 11 email asking staffers to come up with information about biometrics at the mayor’s request. “It will be our recommendation in the memo that it not be pursued for multiple reasons. But we have to answer the question that was asked of us which is what would it take to do it.”

The preliminary memo identifies a number of other potential “unintended consequences” and potential “harms” of biometric scanning and tracking of people experiencing homelessness. Among them: The  likelihood that a large number of people (particularly those with paranoia or psychosis) would refuse to submit to fingerprinting and scanning, and the fact that advocates would likely decry biometrics as an “oversimplified” method of tracking people that “objectif[ies] and separate[s] groups of already marginalized people.”

“Use of biometrics at shelters may further reinforce perceptions that shelters are ‘institutional spaces for government intrusion and surveillance of low-income and homeless people,'” the memo continues. “The finger scanning method could trigger traumatic memories of people who have previously been fingerprinted.” Continue reading “Human Services Department Opposes Biometric Screening for Homeless, But Refuses to Hand Over Memo Saying So” →

Affordability, Featured, homelessness, housing, Mayor Durkan, Privacy

Durkan Pushes City to Study Biometric Tracking of Homeless “Customers”
Photo by NEC Corporation of America with Creative Commons license

At the direction of Mayor Jenny Durkan, the city’s Human Services Department is studying the possibility of mandatory biometric screening of homeless shelter and service clients, using fingerprints or other biometric markers to track the city’s homeless population as they move through the homelessness system. Durkan spokeswoman Kamaria Hightower says that the use of biometrics or a “digital ID” would create “efficiencies” that improve on the scan cards currently used by some Seattle shelters. “Different cities and states have explored solutions including digital IDs and biometrics, so the City has been gathering information on how to improve services,” she says.

The city also maintains that there is currently widespread duplication of data from shelters and service providers—redundant information that makes it hard for the city to track how many people are using services and which services are most effective.

Hightower says the new technology may provide “new ways to better serve persons experiencing homelessness… allow[ing] people to access services without having to maintain hardcopy documents” or hang on to scan cards.

“The plan should include pros/cons … and the cost associated with implementing [biometrics]. Would we be able to make some of these adjustments in the 2020 contracts?”—Email from Deputy Mayor David Moseley to HSD director Jason Johnson

“One clear challenge [with scan cards] is that individuals can lose their cards,” Hightower says. But critics, and some HSD staffers, are skeptical that the benefits of better data outweigh privacy and other concerns raised by biometric tracking. And homeless advocates point out that  people often lose their IDs and other documents when the city sweeps their encampment and removes or throws away their stuff, a policy that has accelerated under Durkan.

In an email on November 4, which I obtained through a records request, deputy mayor David Moseley directed HSD director Jason Johnson to look into “how would we convert to biometrics for folks entering … shelter?”

“Apparently this is something San Francisco does and that Mark Dones”—the consultant whose firm received $637,000 over the past year for their work on the new regional homelessness authority—”advocates for,” Moseley wrote.

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In a 2018 report to the city and county, Dones  recommended “explor[ing] opportunities to create radically accessible, customer-driven services through digital identification” for people experiencing homelessness in King County. A digital ID is an encrypted file containing medical information and other personal data that is typically accessed through the use of fingerprints or other biometric markers rather than a scan card or physical documents. Advocates for digital IDs and fingerprinting say that it helps homeless shelters provide service to clients faster; detractors call it “dangerous” technology that is “ripe for abuse.”

“The plan should include pros/cons … and the cost associated with implementing,” Moseley continued. “Would we be able to make some of these adjustments in the 2020 contracts?”

The task of looking into biometrics, along with several other research projects, fell to HSD strategic advisor Dusty Olson, who expressed her concerns in an email to Diana Salazar, the director of HSD’s Homeless Strategy and Investment division. “The one we would need to do the most work on would be the biometrics. That will be incredibly unpopular with Council and some advocates, who were concerned about the invasive elements of using scan cards,” Olson wrote. Some large shelter providers distribute scan cards to clients; these cards are linked to the Homeless Management Information System, which contains information about everyone who enters the homelessness system.

“I am not sure they are trying to solve a specific problem. [Durkan] probably just heard about a cool thing. …. I think we need to just research biometrics and make a recommendation.” — HSD strategic advisor Dusty Olson, internal email

Privacy and homeless advocates contacted by The C Is for Crank were not aware of the city’s behind-the-scenes work on biometrics, but raised a number of objections to the concept. Shankar Narayan, director of the Technology and Liberty Project for the Washington state ACLU, says the use of biometrics seems like a high-tech solution in search of a problem, and points out that local data collection can have unintended consequences; Seattle shares data from its automated license plate readers with the state Department of Transportation, for example, but has no control over how WSDOT uses that data or whether they share it with federal agencies such as ICE.

“Why is it so difficult for them to identify people through a means other than putting everyone’s biometrics in a database?” Narayan asks. “What problem is your shiny tech doo-dad the solution to? And if you’re going to force people to give up their biometrics, it had better be for a really really good reason. But we haven’t had the chance to have that conversation because they’re jumping ahead to the shiny new thing.”

Continue reading “Durkan Pushes City to Study Biometric Tracking of Homeless “Customers”” →