Woodward Appointed to MA Commission on Facial Recognition
John D. Woodward Jr., Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, has been named to a special legislative Commission on Government Use of Facial Recognition Technology.
Created by Massachusetts bill S.2963 – signed into law by Governor Charlie Baker on December 31, 2020 – the commission is charged with conducting a study of facial recognition’s use in the commonwealth and making policy recommendations. The 22 person commission is comprised of representatives from the private sector, government, civil liberties organizations, law enforcement, and academia.
Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Ronald Mariano appointed Woodward as a commission member in light of his extensive scholarship and experience in the field of identification technologies, including his work as the Director of the Department of Defense’s Biometrics Management Office during the Iraq War (2003-2005).
John D. Woodward, Jr. is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. During his twenty-year CIA career, John served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, with assignments in Washington D.C., East Asia, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. His publications include Biometrics: Identity Assurance in the Information Age (McGraw-Hill, 2003) and Army Biometric Applications: Identifying and Addressing Sociocultural Concerns (RAND, 2001). Read more about Professor Woodward on his faculty profile.