Following in San Francisco’s footsteps, the City of Oakland passed on first reading a modification of their Surveillance Transparency Ordinance that totally bans the use of facial recognition technology by the municipality. The municipal ban becomes the third in the nation, following San Francisco and Somerville, Massachusetts.
Facial recognition technology has come under fire due to a high error rate and numerous academic studies have confirmed biased algorithims that misidentify Black and Brown faces at unacceptably high rates. The real-time use of the technology would provide law enforcement with previously unimaginable abilities to identify any individual in public at any time, destroying the principle of anonymity when not suspected of any crime and chilling the ability to engage in public dissent.