SAN FRANCISCO, July 16 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. civil rights advocacy group Tuesday urged Oakland city in the Bay Area to ban the use of facial recognition technology in public surveillance.
The Northern California affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released an advisory letter to the Oakland City Council earlier Tuesday, the same day when the council unanimously approved an ordinance banning the use of facial recognition technology by the city departments, including the police.
The ACLU, a nationwide non-profit organization that claims to defend the individual rights and liberties, urged the Bay Area city to protect its residents from "dangerous, invasive, and biased systems that endanger their civil rights and safety."
"Face recognition technology enables the government to automatically track residents' identities, whereabouts, associations, and even facial expressions," said the ACLU, asserting that people should not have to fear having their movements and private lives logged in a database simply for walking down the street.
The group noted that San Francisco, CA and Somerville, Massachusetts have adopted similar ordinances.
The Oakland City Council is scheduled to cast a second vote on the ordinance on Sept. 17, after which the new policy could go into effect, making it the third U.S. city to ban facial recognition technology, local media reported.
In May 2019, San Francisco banned the use of facial recognition software by police and other city agencies, making it the first U.S. city to outlaw the technology.
However, some organizations supporting the technology argued that the ban would hurt the law-enforcing capabilities of police officers when they are called for help.
