JALSA Submits Testimony in Support of Facial Surveillance Regulation Legislation

July 15, 2025

Dear Chairs Edwards and Day:

The Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA) is a membership-based non-profit organization based in Boston, with thousands of members and supporters statewide. Guided by Jewish teachings and values, we are devoted to the defense of civil rights, the preservation of constitutional liberties, and the passionate pursuit of social, economic, racial, and environmental justice for all people.

JALSA stands in strong support of S.1053 / H.1946, An Act to Implement the Recommendations of the Special Commission on Facial Recognition Technology. This legislation is necessary to prevent abrogations of civil rights and due process rights of Massachusetts residents due to potential misuse of facial recognition technology for surveillance purposes.

In Jewish tradition, we are taught the critical importance of consent in governance and privacy in daily life. Our foundational texts speak of the harms of appointing leaders who are unconcerned with respecting the agency afforded to all members of society, and who separate themselves from the people, putting in place protections to prevent rulers from overstepping their boundaries. Rabbinic texts also teach us about the value in people being able to protect the privacy of their own lives and experiences. Unchecked facial surveillance technology violates these principles. Safeguards, as laid out in the special commission’s recommendations, are absolutely necessary.

People deserve agency over their personal information and how that information is used. Unchecked use of facial surveillance technology robs people of this important control.  Furthermore, study after study has shown that none of the systems of facial recognition are free from inherent racial bias. The federal government’s own technology standards agency found that leading facial recognition algorithms exhibit racial and gender biases, and that Black women are particularly vulnerable to misidentification by these systems. It is noteworthy that the special commission’s recommendations were endorsed by a wide range of organizations, spanning across law enforcement institutions like the Massachusetts State Police to civil rights organizations like the NAACP.

Additionally, our immigrant neighbors are particularly susceptible to being tracked by the federal government. The information obtained from unchecked facial surveillance could be misused and abused to enforce draconian immigration policies, in which due process rights and even basic respect for human dignity – Kavod HaBriyot – have been recently eroded.

Facial recognition technology features a high failure rate. Emails uncovered by the ACLU have shown that accuracy can be as low as 30%, a shocking number especially given the stakes of undue incarceration and deportation. This legislation to implement the recommendations of the special commission’s recommendations will take vital steps to protect privacy, safeguard civil rights and due process rights, and protect Massachusetts from wrongful arrest.

JALSA strongly urges the members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary to report S.1053 / H.1946, An Act to Implement the Recommendations of the Special Commission on Facial Recognition Technology, favorably out of committee as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Cindy Rowe
President & CEO
Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action