14 DAY TRIAL // Facial recognition technology was based in the city of San Francisco, making this the first city in The United States to take such a drastic measure.
People are used with the idea of facial recognition from movies long before this feature arrived in the real world. Now, phones already perform facial recognition for unlocking your phone so you might think that there’s nothing to it.
In theory, the system would be ideal in certain situations, like finding someone running from the law. Just show the system what it should be looking for and let the system comb through thousands of cameras spread around the city.
All fine and dandy, but like any new technology, facial recognition is going to have problems. First of all, there is the human factor. While people would need a warrant to use this system, it’s also likely that it could be abused.
And then there is the fact that facial recognition, for all its touted prowess, it’s extremely inaccurate. For example, it was revealed that in London, a facial recognition system wrongfully identified 96% of its targets, which is an appalling number.
It’s a hard no for San Francisco
According to a BBC report, San Francisco becomes the first US city to explicitly forbid the usage of facial recognition citing privacy concerns among the biggest problem. Matt Cagle, from the American Civil Liberties Union, explains that it could be the first step for other cities to do the same.
“With this vote, San Francisco has declared that face surveillance technology is incompatible with a healthy democracy and that residents deserve a voice in decisions about high-tech surveillance. We applaud the city for listening to the community, and leading the way forward with this crucial legislation. Other cities should take note and set up similar safeguards to protect people's safety and civil rights.”
While this new rule takes effect in the city of San Francisco, the airports and the port do not fall under the same jurisdiction, as they are controlled from a federal level.