As San Francisco Bans Facial Recognition Tech By Local Cops, New York City's Legislators Stall On Transparency Reforms

As San Francisco Bans Facial Recognition Tech By Local Cops, New York City's Legislators Stall On Transparency Reforms

5 years ago
Anonymous $9jpehmcKty

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190520/18240342246/as-san-francisco-bans-facial-recognition-tech-local-cops-new-york-citys-legislators-stall-transparency-reforms.shtml

Earlier this month, the San Francisco city council passed the first ban on facial recognition tech use by city agencies in the US. While other cities have scaled back government use of surveillance tech by introducing measures requiring public input periods and approval by city legislators, San Francisco is the only one to ban the tech outright. And it did so prior to any deployment by local agencies, managing to be one of the few governments to have ever have closed a barn door while horses were still in the barn.

Elsewhere in the nation, not much is happening. In one of the most-surveilled cities in the United States -- New York City -- bills attempting to rein in the NYPD's enthusiasm for surveillance tech are going nowhere. This is from the New York Times Editorial Board: