No FACIAL RECOGNITION TECH FOR COPS.

AuthorCiaramella, C.J.
PositionCIVIL LIBERTIES

THE LOS ANGELES Police Department (LAPD) banned the use of commercial facial recognition apps in November after BuzzFeed News reported that more than 25 LAPD employees had performed nearly 475 searches using controversial technology developed by the company Clearview Al. That's one of several recent developments related to growing public concern about police surveillance using facial recognition.

Clearview Al's app relies on billions of photos scraped from Facebook and other social media platforms. The app, like other facial recognition technologies, pairs that database with machine learning software to teach an algorithm how to match a face to the photos the company has collected.

Clearview is just one player in an expanding market. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in December that the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office had coordinated 1,000 searches through its Cognitec facial recognition software since 2018.

Concerns about such technologies have led several legislative bodies to delay, restrict, or halt their use by law enforcement agencies. In December, the Massachusetts legislature approved the first state ban on police use of facial recognition tech. During nationwide protests over police abuse last summer, the New York City Council passed the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act, which requires the New York Police Department to disclose all of the surveillance technology it uses on the public.

This technology is often deployed without public knowledge or debate, sometimes before the kinks have been worked out. An...

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