San Francisco bans facial recognition technology by municipal agencies

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday enacted the first ban by a major city on the use of facial recognition technology by police and all other municipal agencies. Police forces across America have begun turning to facial recognition to search for both small-time criminal suspects and perpetrators of mass carnage: authorities used the technology to help identify the gunman in the mass killing at an Annapolis, Md., newspaper in June. But civil liberty groups have expressed unease about the technology’s potential abuse by government amid fears that it may shove the United States in the direction of an overly oppressive surveillance state.

Source: www.nytimes.com