Calif. lawmakers aim to rein in police use of facial recognition
By: Sam Dean, Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — 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 are considering regulation barring all California police 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.
