The launch of Ohio’s new facial recognition system has led to violation of the religious rights of Muslim-Americans, a civil rights group says.
Some Muslim women who wear head coverings have complained that driver’s license photographers have asked them to adjust their scarves to expose their hairline and ears, features they cover for religious reasons. Sikh men and women have also been asked to remove their turbans, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Friday in a statement.
The facial recognition technology can best match the driver’s license photo with a snapshot of a person if all the person’s features are exposed in both photos, as it measures the distance between the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, for instance.
But the Bureau of Motor Vehicles allows religious head coverings in driver’s license photos. So a person who is asked to remove a scarf or turban need only tell the photographer he or she is wearing it for a religious reason, spokesman Dustin Fox said. While a woman’s scarf may not cover her forehead, it may cover her hair and ears, according to Ohio law.
Religious face coverings, however, have long been required to be removed so that the photo is usable for identifying someone if they are pulled over, Fox said.
CAIR and the American Civil Liberties Union had each asked for a seat on Attorney General Mike DeWine’s advisory group on the facial recognition system, but those requests were denied. The group has only criminal justice experts on it, but its meetings will be open to the public, DeWine’s spokeswoman said.
“The attorney general should have informed the legislature and sought public comment before implementing this new and potentially invasive technology,” CAIR-Cleveland Executive Director Julia Shearson said Friday in a statement. “Now his office has blundered again by not including privacy and civil liberties experts on the belatedly-formed commission that will help establish the guidelines after-the-fact for a program that is already up and running.”