Boston Votes To Ban Government Use of Facial Recognition

Boston is now the largest city on the East Coast to ban facial recognition technology for municipal use. They join cities like San Francisco, Oakland, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. CNET reports: The ordinance passed unanimously and will prevent the capital city from using facial recognition technology or obtaining software for conducting surveillance using the technology. “Boston should not be using racially discriminatory technology and technology that threatens our basic rights,” City Councilor Michelle Wu said at the hearing on Wednesday. The ordinance comes with exceptions, like allowing city employees to use facial recognition for authentication purposes such as unlocking their own devices. City officials can also use facial recognition technology for automatically redacting faces in images. But they can’t use it for identifying people. The vote came from City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who sponsored the bill with Wu. “This is a crucial victory for our privacy rights and for people like Robert Williams, who have been arrested for crimes they did not commit because of a technology law enforcement shouldn’t be using,” said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.”Lawmakers nationwide should follow suit and immediately stop law enforcement use of this technology. This surveillance technology is dangerous when right, and dangerous when wrong.”