Maine Passes the Strongest State Facial Recognition Ban Yet
upstart writes:
Maine passes the strongest state facial recognition ban yet:
The law bans most use of the technology and adds accountability measures
The state of Maine now has the most stringent laws regulating government use of facial recognition in the country.
The new law prohibits government use of facial recognition except in specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention.
Since Maine police will not have access to facial recognition, they will be able to ask the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) to run these searches.
Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are designated as public records.
[...] "Maine is showing the rest of the country what it looks like when we the people are in control of our civil rights and civil liberties, not tech companies that stand to profit from widespread government use of face surveillance technology," Michael Kebede, a lawyer at the ACLU of Maine, said in a press release.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.