Last month, San Francisco became the first city to ban facial recognition. Now, other cities in California like Oakland and Berkley are considering bans on the technology, as well.
Both Oakland and Berkley intend to take up the facial recognition tech ban issues at their scheduled meetings and if the ban is approved by these committees, it will be brought before their full city council on July 9, says a news report.
Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland Councilwoman, is sponsoring the city’s proposed ban and believes that the technology is shown to be flawed and could be used to improperly target minorities and be unfair to people of darker skin colors. “It is important to build trust and good relationships between community and police and to remedy racial bias, however this flawed technology could make those problems worse. The right to privacy and the right to equal protection are fundamental and we cannot surrender them,” Kaplan said.
The Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick asked the council not to ban the technology outright. Kirkpatrick instead proposes that police should be allowed to use it after a crime has occurred to match potential criminals to crimes that have already happened.
Presently, she said, police cannot purchase any technology without the approval of the city’s Privacy Advisory Commission. Kirkpatrick doesn’t see why the current rule simply can’t simply remain in place. No city department uses facial recognition, the report says.
