Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide information on its deployment of facial recognition technology and how it ensures that citizens retain their civil rights.

The letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson sought information on public housing and federally assisted properties, including policies implemented to regulate facial recognition technology and research conducted to support its deployment.

The lawmakers also asked Carson to provide a list of federally assisted properties that deploy facial recognition over the past five years by Jan. 24, 2020.

According to the letter, scientific studies have proven that facial recognition “misidentifies many individuals” and exacerbates risk to vulnerable communities when the data is shared with law enforcement entities.

The letter comes after reports that facial recognition has been installed in public housing units in Detroit and New York. The lawmakers noted that such technologies “could be used to enable invasive, unnecessary and harmful government surveillance of their residents.”

The eight signatories are Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass.; and Reps. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.

Maj. Gen. Lee Payne, director for combat support at the Defense Health Agency, said the U.S. military’s new electronic health records system works to help DHS manage the quality of care for personnel and protect their data.

He told audience at the Society of Federal Health Professionals’ annual meeting that MHS Genesis  implementation efforts involved computer security, medical device and cloud computing tests, the agency said Tuesday.

A team of Leidos, Cerner and Accenture won a multiyear, multibillion dollar contract from the Department of Defense in July 2015 to integrate a commercial EHS technology across the system.

“The bottom line of the national defense strategy is enhancing readiness and increasing lethality,” Payne said.

“We want our system to help us do that, and then enhance our ability to make the health care system operate more effectively. MHS Genesis helps us move in that direction,” he added.

Eight west coast sites have already adopted MHS Genesis, and DHA plans to continue the phased deployment initiative in June. The agency aims to fully complete the process by 2023.

The Department of the Navy has called off competitions for the development of a mission system architecture and a payload adapter under the Marine Air Ground Task Force Unmanned Aircraft System Expeditionary program, Inside Defense reported Thursday.

In a pair of notices posted on the beta SAM website, DON said the department and the U.S. Marine Corps will review the requirements for the two prize challenges.

USMC has envisioned MUX UAS as a multimission platform with the capacity to operate from guided missile destroyers and other “air capable” vessels or ashore locations.

The first competition called for the design of an adapter that would insert mission payload containers into a drone’s airframe and the second competition sought a modular architecture that would accommodate multiple UAS mission system payloads.

Both challenges were originally unveiled in May.

A new Center for a New American Security report offers several recommendations for U.S. government leaders to help ensure U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence.

CNAS said Tuesday the recommendations are classified into seven sections: research and development; human talent; illicit technology transfer; AI hardware; AI norms; government readiness; and AI standards and measurement.

The center called on the government to increase annual R&D spending on AI to $25B by 2025, incentivize industry research on AI by providing tax credits and access to government datasets and promote international R&D cooperation.

The government should raise the cap for H1-B visas, eliminate the cap for advanced degree holders and boost funding opportunities for university researchers to further develop tech talent.

Small and medium-sized companies should get more cyber defense support and universities should enhance collaboration with U.S. counterintelligence experts to address illegal tech transfer.

CNAS also recommended the establishment of multilateral export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, an increase in the availability of affordable compute resources and diversification of semiconductor fabrication through the creation of an international fab consortium with allies. Domestic semiconductor manufacturing efforts should be supported with retooling incentives and semiconductor supply chains should be secured through public-private partnerships.

The Missile Defense Agency and industry representatives held a meeting at MDA’s Alabama headquarters to discuss potential ways of targeting hypersonic missiles and lay the groundwork for the Hypersonic Defense Regional Glide Phase Weapon System, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

“They’re going after the regional as opposed to the homeland mission,” Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of MDA’s efforts.

The new program comes as the Department of Defense works to accelerate hypersonic defense initiatives amid recent efforts of Russia and China to deploy such weapons.

A defense bill the Senate sent to the White House Tuesday includes $230.9M in funds to advance hypersonic defense programs. House and Senate appropriators also approved $108M in additional funding in support of MDA’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program.