Calif Legislature Moves to Ban Facial Recognition

Facial recognition’s first blanket ban arrived in May, when San Francisco became the only city in the nation to bar police and other agencies from using the technology. Now the powerful software, which uses machine learning algorithms to automatically track human faces in digital footage and match them to names, is facing a broader moratorium. State lawmakers just passed regulation barring all California law enforcement officers from running facial recognition programs on body cameras. Other Bay Area cities such as Berkeley and Oakland are considering following San Francisco’s lead in banning all applications for local police. And federal legislators — from both sides of the aisle — are holding hearings on Capitol Hill to examine how federal agencies are using the technology, and whether it deserves more scrutiny and stricter controls.

From social media to smart speakers, technological innovations have upended entire industries and changed the fabric of everyday life, with minimal public debate beforehand and sometimes significant unintended consequences. What makes facial recognition different is an emerging consensus that it poses a unique and alarming threat to basic civil liberties — and once it becomes widespread, it may be too late to stop it. The bill states biometric surveillance is the “functional equivalent of requiring every person to show a personal photo identification card at all times in violation of recognized constitutional rights,” regardless of consent. It runs the risk of creating massive, unregulated databases about Californians never suspected of committing a crime, and “may chill the exercise of free speech in public places” as the identities of anyone in a crowd could be immediately discerned.



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https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-face-recognition-ban-california-police-body-camera-20190607-story.html