Virginia and Maryland are moving to ban facial recognition tech in US

Earlier this week, the Boston city council voted to ban facial recognition technology. Now, two neighboring states are moving to do the same. The state capitals of Virginia and Maryland are set to consider a ban on the tech.<br><br>The proposed legislation that will be considered in Richmond, Virginia is set to be written by Del. Jay Jones and effect every city and county in the state. Baltimore, Maryland has proposed a bill that would completely ban the use of facial recognition technology in the city.<br><br>Both bills were announced after the Boston city council voted to ban the tech earlier this week. The attention that Boston received after banning the tech is what inspired both Virginia and Maryland’s decision to put together the proposed legislation.<br><br>The movement to ban the technology started in San Francisco. After that cities like Somerville, Massachusetts and Oakland’s have followed suite. The use of facial recognition technology has been met with a lot of criticism. Many feel that it is an invasion of privacy.<br><br>Law enforcement agencies are the biggest users of facial recognition technology. They use the technology to identify people and then track their location. According to a report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, many of the biggest cities in the US have used the technology.<br><br>Jones is worried about the government overstepping and invading people’s privacy. Many are worried about the government creating a database that maps everyone’s faces.<br><br>“What worries me is we would then create a database and have the ability to track individuals but it wouldn’t be where’s an individual,” he explained. “It’s everywhere they go. And that’s when it becomes particularly pernicious if you start to have law enforcement using that type of data without a warrant and without any probable cause. That’s when it becomes a problem.”<br><br>Virginia and Maryland’s decision to ban facial recognition technology comes after the same type of bans were put in place by the cities of Baltimore, Maryland and Washington D.C.<br><br>Boston’s city council vote marked the first time that a city of their size banned the tech. Boston is the largest city in Massachusetts and the 24th largest city in the nation.<br><br>Baltimore city councilman Ryan Dorsey said that facial recognition technology is a threat to public safety.<br><br>“Face surveillance technology is the perfect example of a solution in search of a problem that poses an existential threat to public safety, racial justice and basic human freedom and human liberties.<br><br>It is not something that we as a city should ever be engaged in. It is a technology that is proven not to work. It is a technology that is proven to be an instrument of racism. And it is — it is a — it is — it is a gratuitous expansion of the surveillance state and an existential threat to our democracy.”<br><br>Earlier this year, it was reported that black people were misidentified by the tech more often than white people. Also, the use of facial recognition tech is a violation of the spirit that the country was built on, Dorsey explained.<br><br>“But it is most criminally egregious because it is a complete betrayal of the founding principles this country was founded upon: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”