Facial Recognition Act of 2023

• Authority: United States Congress
• Parent authority: Federal government
• Jurisdiction: United States
• Collections: U.S. federal laws
• Most recent activity: Defunct
• Most recent activity date: 2025-01-03

Risk subdomain coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the risk subdomain are explicitly described.

• Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
• Unequal performance across groups
• Compromise of privacy
• Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale
• Overreliance and unsafe use
• Lack of capability or robustness
• Lack of transparency or interpretability

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the risk subdomain are described.

• AI system security vulnerabilities
• Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

All other risk subdomains had no coverage in this document.

Risk Coverage Summary

The document has good coverage of approximately 8-10 subdomains, with strong focus on unfair discrimination (1.1, 1.3), privacy compromise (2.1), security vulnerabilities (2.2), disinformation and surveillance (4.1), fraud and manipulation (4.3), overreliance and unsafe use (5.1), and lack of robustness (7.3). Coverage is concentrated in discrimination, privacy, malicious use prevention, and AI system reliability domains.

Sector coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the sector are explicitly described.

• Public Administration (excl. National Security)

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the sector are described.

• Information
• Scientific Research & Development Services
• National Security

All other sectors had no coverage in this document.

Sectors Summary

The document primarily governs the Public Administration excluding National Security sector through extensive regulation of law enforcement use of facial recognition. It also has minimal coverage of Information sector (through DMV database requirements) and National Security sector (through limited applicability to federal law enforcement).

Legislative Status

Hard Law

Legislative Status Summary

This is a binding federal statute introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives with mandatory language throughout, explicit enforcement mechanisms including suppression of evidence, civil actions with damages, administrative discipline, and funding penalties for non-compliance.

Actors

Proposer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: United States Congress; Mr. Lieu; Ms. Jackson Lee; Ms. Clarke of New York; Mr. Gomez; Mr. Ivey; Mr. Veasey; Committee on the Judiciary; Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
• Summary: The document is a bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Lieu and co-sponsors, referred to the Judiciary and Science committees for consideration.

Target

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor, AI_Deployer
• Entities: investigative or law enforcement officers; law enforcement agencies; State and local governments; Federal law enforcement agencies; prosecutors; State departments of motor vehicles
• Summary: The Act regulates law enforcement use of facial recognition technology, applying to both federal and state/local law enforcement officers and agencies that deploy or use facial recognition systems.

Enforcer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: Attorney General; courts of competent jurisdiction; Government Accountability Office; National Institute of Standards and Technology; Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division; Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance; Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts
• Summary: Multiple federal entities are designated with enforcement authority including the Attorney General (funding penalties), courts (issuing orders and hearing civil actions), GAO (audits), and NIST (testing standards).

Monitor

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: Government Accountability Office; National Institute of Standards and Technology; Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts; Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance; independent State agencies
• Summary: The Act establishes comprehensive monitoring through GAO audits of federal agencies, NIST testing protocols, annual reporting to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and independent state agency audits of state/local agencies.

AI Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle stages covered by the documents, as defined in the OECD Framework for the Classification of AI Systems

• Collect and Process Data
• Verify and Validate
• Deploy
• Operate and Monitor

AI Lifecycle Summary

The document primarily focuses on the Deploy and Operate and Monitor stages of the AI lifecycle, with significant coverage of Verify and Validate through mandatory testing requirements. It does not substantially address the earlier stages of Plan and Design, Collect and Process Data, or Build and Use Model.

Technical Scope

Terms relating to technical scope that are mentioned or implicitly referenced in the document

No technical scope terms identified.

Technical Scope Summary

The document explicitly focuses on facial recognition systems and technology. It does not mention AI models, AI systems, frontier AI, general purpose AI, task-specific AI, foundation models, generative AI, predictive AI, open-weight models, or compute thresholds. The scope is narrowly defined around facial recognition technology for law enforcement use.