San Francisco has become the first major U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition technology by police and other city agencies. Under the new rules, city agencies would need to obtain permission from the city’s Board of Supervisors before implementing any new surveillance technologies.
The biometric technology can still be employed at San Francisco’s airport since it’s controlled by the federal government. Matt Cagle, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, hailed the decision and said that such technology “provides government with unprecedented power to track people going about their daily lives. That’s incompatible with a healthy democracy.” Experts have also warned about racial and other kinds of bias.