Big Tech Bans Cops From Facial Recognition Capabilities

Our Take

Back when IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft made headlines for stepping back from selling facial recognition to police departments, it felt like a rare win against the surveillance state. The Rational National's breakdown of that moment is worth revisiting, because it shows how narrow these corporate 'ethics' pledges really were. Facial recognition got the spotlight and the backlash. License plate readers did not, and that gap has cost us dearly.

While Big Tech was busy issuing statements about racial justice and algorithmic bias, a much quieter surveillance network was expanding across nearly every American city: automated license plate readers. Flock Safety didn't need face-matching software to build a nationwide tracking grid — it just needed plates, timestamps, and a lot of unmonitored intersections. No moratorium, no press conference, no accountability. The 2020 facial recognition pause was a symbolic gesture that let a different, arguably more pervasive, tracking technology grow unchecked in the background.

That's the pattern with corporate self-regulation: it responds to public pressure on the technology getting attention that week, while the next one slides in underneath. If you want to see how far that expansion has gone in your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on ALPR deployments near you, our take-action guide is the place to start.