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San Francisco bans city use of facial recognition
San Francisco is following through on talk of banning facial recognition tech. The city's Board of Supervisors has voted 8-1 in favor of a bill, the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance, that bans city government (including police) from using facial recognition technology. It also demands a public oversight body for surveillance technology purchases such as license plate readers and Stingray cell tower spoofers. The move makes San Francisco the first city in the US to outright ban government adoption of facial recognition tech.
San Francisco could be the first US city to ban facial recognition tech (updated)
The Chinese government has drawn widespread condemnation in recent months over its extensive use of public surveillance and facial recognition technology to monitor the movements of some 12 million Muslim citizens. "It's a 'Muslim tracker' funded by Chinese authorities in the province of Xinjiang to keep track of Uyghur Muslims," Victor Gevers, co-founder of GDI Foundation, a non-profit open-internet advocacy group, wrote on Twitter in February. Facial recognition tracking has received its fair share of criticism here in the US as well -- even as companies like Amazon field test their half-baked AIs with police departments across the country -- and may soon spawn the nation's first outright ban on the technology.
