Electronic surveillance

How to avoid a dystopian future of facial recognition in law enforcement

Civil liberties activists warn that the powerful technology, which identifies people by matching a picture or video of a person’s face to databases of photos, can be used to passively spy on people without any reasonable suspicion or their consent. Many of these leaders don’t just want to regulate facial recognition tech — they want to ban or pause its use completely.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who so rarely agree on anything, have recently joined forces to attempt to limit law enforcement agencies’ ability to surveil Americans with this technology, citing concerns that the unchecked use of facial recognition could lead to the creation of an Orwellian surveillance state.

Several cities, such as San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville, Massachusetts have banned police use of the technology in the past year. A new federal bill was introduced earlier this month that would severely restrict its use by federal law enforcement, requiring a court order to track people for longer than three days. And some senators have discussed a far-reaching bill that would completely halt government use of the technology.