Police in Austin, San Francisco secretly skirted facial recognition bans
Source: Washington Post
BUSINESS
Police in Austin, San Francisco secretly skirted facial recognition bans
Citing concerns about accuracy and racial bias, the cities banned the technology. But some police officers found ways to use it.
By Douglas MacMillan
May 18, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
As cities and states push to restrict the use of facial recognition technologies, some police departments have quietly found a way to keep using the controversial tools: asking for help from other law enforcement agencies that still have access.
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Officers in Austin and San Francisco — two of the largest cities where police are banned from using the technology — have repeatedly asked police in neighboring towns to run photos of criminal suspects through their facial recognition programs, according to a Washington Post review of police documents.
In San Francisco, the workaround didn’t appear to help. Since the city’s ban took effect in 2019, the San Francisco Police Department has asked outside agencies to conduct at least five facial recognition searches, but no matches were returned, according to a summary of those incidents submitted by the department to the county’s Board of Supervisors last year.
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Nate Jones contributed to this report.
By Douglas MacMillan
Doug MacMillan is a corporate accountability reporter for The Washington Post. He previously covered technology for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and Businessweek. Twitter
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/18/facial-recognition-law-enforcement-austin-san-francisco/
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