Kansas City Transit Agency Revives Plan for Facial Recognition on Buses

The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is moving ahead with a plan to put AI-powered facial recognition cameras on some of its buses this fall, a program that would make it one of the first transit agencies in the country to scan riders’ faces in service of security. The agency says the cameras would initially be used to identify riders who have been banned from the system, but privacy groups and at least one of its own commissioners are pushing back.

KCATA already runs security cameras on all of its buses and posts images of banned riders for drivers to watch for. Tyler Means, the agency’s chief strategy officer, said AI-powered cameras would flag those riders faster and alert a security team made up of private officers and two armed police. Footage from the cameras would be stored for five years, as current video is now. Means framed the rollout as a limited test, saying the agency is, in his words, “intrigued to see if it even works” before any expansion.

The agency had originally planned to install the cameras on five buses ahead of the World Cup, hoping to help identify missing persons during the tournament, but the federal Department of Justice grant meant to fund them was stalled by the partial government shutdown that began in February. KCATA now wants to expand the program to 30 buses in the fall. Before any cameras go on, it must upgrade the fleet’s Wi-Fi, expected in mid-July, and then run a procurement to select a vendor.

Critics argue the technology puts riders at risk rather than protecting them. Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called it “a really terrible idea” and noted that facial recognition has been linked to more than a dozen false arrests in the United States. KCATA commissioner Johnathan Duncan, a Kansas City Council member, said he would “fight hard to ensure we never implement” the cameras, warning that they would erode rider trust.

The plan, first reported when KCATA moved to pilot AI cameras on select bus routes, mirrors broader interest in biometric monitoring on public transit, including when Transport for London weighed live facial recognition on the Underground. KCATA says the cameras would be used only for bus security and its banned-rider list, and that comparing footage against missing-persons or wanted lists would require a separate agreement with law enforcement that is not currently planned.

Sources: KCUR

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team