United States. San Francisco, the birthplace of Silicon Valley, became the first U.S. city to ban its government from using facial recognition technology.
The ban is part of a broader anti-surveillance ordinance that the city's Board of Supervisors approved on May 14. The ordinance, which prohibits the use of facial recognition technology by police and other government departments, could also encourage other local governments to take similar steps. Eight of the board's 11 supervisors voted in favor of it; one voted against, and two supporters were absent.
San Francisco's new rule, which will take effect in a month, prohibits the use of facial recognition technology by the city's 53 departments, including the San Francisco Police Department, which does not currently use such technology but did test it between 2013 and 2017. However, the ordinance provides an exception for federally controlled facilities at San Francisco International Airport and the Port of San Francisco. The ordinance does not prevent businesses or residents from using facial recognition or surveillance technology in general, such as in their own security cameras. And it also doesn't do anything to prevent police, for example, from using footage from a person's Nest camera to help in a criminal case.
"We all support good policing, but none of us want to live in a police state," San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who introduced the bill earlier this year, told CNN Business.
Critics of the rule said that instead of focusing on bans, the city should find ways to craft regulations that recognize the usefulness of facial recognition. "It's ridiculous to deny the value of this technology in securing airports and border facilities," said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University. "It's hard to deny that there is a public safety value to this technology."
Source: CNN.
