Berkeley City Council Unanimously Votes To Ban Face Recognition

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Berkeley has become the third city in California and the fourth city in the United States to ban the use of face recognition technology by the government. After an outpouring of support from the community, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to adopt the ordinance introduced by Councilmember Kate Harrison earlier this year. Berkeley joins other Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, which also banned government use of face recognition. In July 2019, Somerville, Massachusetts became the first city on the East Coast to ban the government’s use of face recognition. The passage of the ordinance also follows the signing of A.B. 1215, a California state law that places a three-year moratorium on police use of face recognition on body-worn cameras, beginning on January 1, 2020. As EFF’s Associate Director of Community Organizing Nathan Sheard told the California Assembly, using face recognition technology “in connection with police body cameras would force Californians to decide between actively avoiding interaction and cooperation with law enforcement, or having their images collected, analyzed, and stored as perpetual candidates for suspicion.”

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https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/10/17/019239/berkeley-city-council-unanimously-votes-to-ban-face-recognition?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed