#Anaheim #Police purchased #facial #recognition, considered by #California & #Boston lawmakers
The short version: Anaheim's quiet purchase of facial recognition tech, flagged by creator PeepDaSlan9, shows how surveillance tools spread faster than the laws meant to check them.
Our Take
Credit to PeepDaSlan9 for surfacing this one: Anaheim PD reportedly bought facial recognition software while California and Boston lawmakers are still debating whether departments should have it at all. That's the pattern we see over and over — procurement moves at the speed of a purchase order, while oversight moves at the speed of a city council calendar. By the time elected officials get around to asking questions, the cameras and the algorithms are already running.
Facial recognition doesn't operate in a vacuum. Pair it with a city's Flock ALPR network and you've got a system that can track not just where your car goes, but confirm who was driving it. That's a serious escalation in a surveillance landscape already documented on our camera map, and it's exactly the kind of quiet, incremental buildout that should worry anyone who thinks a warrant should still mean something.
These technologies keep landing in police garages before the public even gets a vote, let alone a debate about accuracy, bias, or misuse. If you want to push back on facial recognition and ALPR expansion in your own city, our take-action page has concrete steps — because right now, the only people setting the rules are the ones selling the cameras.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of PeepDaSlan9, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.