Activists resist proposal allowing police use of facial-recognition technology

Our Take

Facial recognition is the natural next step once a city already has a network of cameras logging faces and plates around the clock — which is exactly why this fight in the Bay Area matters far beyond one city council chamber. Once police departments get a green light to run faces through a database, the case-by-case justification that's supposed to guard against dragnet surveillance tends to quietly evaporate. History with this tech is not reassuring: it's been shown to misidentify people, especially women and people of color, and has already contributed to wrongful arrests in other cities.

Credit to KPIX and reporter Lauren Toms for putting the activists' concerns on the record alongside law enforcement's pitch, because these policy fights are usually decided in low-attendance meetings, not headlines. The pattern is familiar: a tool gets sold as narrowly targeted, oversight promises get made, and then scope creep follows once the infrastructure is in place. Facial recognition paired with an existing ALPR network turns a car-tracking system into a face-and-car-tracking system, which is a meaningful escalation of what local government can know about where you go and who you are.

If you want to see what's already watching you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your own city council to have this same debate blind, our take-action page has tools for pushing back before the cameras — and the face database — go live.