San Francisco May Ban Facial Recognition Technology

SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco may become the first U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition by police and other city agencies, reports U.S. News.

Facial recognition is not new. Government agencies in the U.S. have used facial recognition for more than a decade to scan databases for suspects and prevent identity fraud, but the latest advances in artificial intelligence do more than allow police to pinpoint a missing child or protester in a moving crowd.

The technology is getting pushback from both law enforcement and the tech industry. Microsoft, while opposed to an outright ban, has urged lawmakers to set limits on the use of facial recognition. Alvaro Bedoya, who directs Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, describes it as “creepy.”

“It’s not like cookies on a browser,” he said. “There’s something about this technology that really sets the hairs on the back of people’s heads up."

Without regulations barring law enforcement from accessing driver’s license databases, people who have never been arrested could be part of virtual police line-ups without their knowledge, skeptics charge. One day, they say, people may not be able to go out in public without being identified and tracked.

Already, some major stores across the U.S. are testing facial recognition technology that can guess their customers’ age, gender or mood as they walk past products. The goal is to show the shoppers targeted, real-time ads on in-store monitors.

If San Francisco adopts a ban, other cities, states or even Congress could follow, with lawmakers from both parties looking to curtail government surveillance and others hoping to restrict how businesses analyze the faces and emotions of an unsuspecting public.