SFPD allegedly violates facial recognition technology ban
The short version: KRON4's Lezla Gooden reports that SFPD may have used facial recognition despite San Francisco's local ban, raising fresh doubts about whether surveillance ordinances are actually enforced.
Our Take
San Francisco was one of the first cities in the country to ban police use of facial recognition, a policy meant to be a model for the rest of the nation. So when KRON4's Lezla Gooden reports that SFPD may have skirted that very ban, it's not just a local scandal — it's a warning about how fragile these protections really are once they're on the books.
This is the pattern we keep seeing with ALPR and biometric surveillance generally: a city passes a rule, the public assumes the danger is handled, and then years later a reporter or public records request reveals the rule was quietly ignored, reinterpreted, or routed around through a third-party vendor or neighboring agency. Bans without teeth, audits, or independent oversight are just press releases. If a department will bend a facial recognition ban, there's little reason to trust that ALPR data-sharing rules, retention limits, or 'no ICE access' policies are being honored either.
We'd encourage San Francisco residents to keep the pressure on with public records requests and City Hall testimony, and to check our camera map to see what automated surveillance is already deployed near them. If you want to push back on unchecked ALPR and facial recognition expansion in your own city, our take-action page is a good place to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KRON 4, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.