California's Ban Of Facial Recognition Tech Killed Off San Diego's Mostly Useless Biometric Program
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200113/13474043721/californias-ban-facial-recognition-tech-killed-off-san-diegos-mostly-useless-biometric-program.shtml
California's ban on use of facial recognition tech by law enforcement showed the state's government is willing to get out ahead of potential privacy issues. The tech is as popular as it is unproven. Law enforcement agencies strongly believe facial recognition will help it apprehend criminals more efficiently, but the available data simply doesn't back up this belief.
The tech is still pretty lousy at recognizing faces, kicking out false positives at an alarming rate. This also means it's not recognizing faces it should be recognizing -- the criminals and terrorists government agencies are convinced it will catch. They're also prone to bias, more likely to misidentify minorities, which results in increased targeting of demographics already heavily over-represented in most law enforcement agencies' paperwork.