Article from The Wall Street Journal by Asa Fitch.

San Francisco is likely to become the first U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition by local agencies, adding to a broad push to regulate a technology that critics argue can perpetuate police bias and give authorities excessive surveillance powers.

The proposed ban is included in an ordinance that both proponents and opponents say the city’s Board of Supervisors is likely to pass Tuesday. The ordinance would also require any city agency that wants to buy a surveillance system to bring it before the board first.

Officials, activists and companies across the country are debating how to balance the usefulness of rapidly improving artificial-intelligence technologies against their potential for invading privacy and eroding civil liberties.

Dozens of police departments nationwide already routinely apply facial recognition to databases of mug shots and driver’s-license photos to identify suspects. And at least 18 states open their photo databases to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which processed more than 9,000 facial-recognition searches in March, according to official statistics.

Read the entire article at The Wall Street Journal.