Facial recognition

4 entries between July 2018 and November 2021, 1 turning point.

Turning points

  1. San Francisco bans city use of facial recognition

    The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-1 on 14 May 2019 for the Stop Secret Surveillance ordinance, barring city departments including the police from using facial recognition and requiring board approval before other surveillance tools are acquired.

Every entry

  1. Meta shuts down Facebook’s face recognition system

    Meta said on 2 November 2021 that it would shut down Facebook’s face recognition system, which suggested photo tags and told people when they appeared in others’ uploads, and delete the templates of more than a billion people who had opted in.

  2. IBM, Amazon and Microsoft step back from police face recognition

    IBM said on 8 June 2020 that it would stop selling facial recognition. Amazon announced a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition on 10 June, and Microsoft said on 11 June it would not sell the technology to US police until a national law governed it.

  3. San Francisco bans city use of facial recognition

    The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-1 on 14 May 2019 for the Stop Secret Surveillance ordinance, barring city departments including the police from using facial recognition and requiring board approval before other surveillance tools are acquired.

  4. Amazon Rekognition falsely matches 28 members of Congress

    The ACLU of Northern California ran photographs of every member of the US House and Senate against a database of 25,000 public mugshots against Amazon’s Rekognition, and reported 28 false matches on 26 July 2018. Members of color were 39% of the errors and 20% of Congress.