About Face: EFF's new campaign to end government use of face surveillance

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched About Face, a new national campaign to end governmental use of facial recognition technology for surveillance at all levels -- city, state and federal.

As the project says, the real problem with facial surveillance isn't that facial recognition is worse at recognizing Black faces than it is at recognizing white faces. Even if this was fixed, it would still put people at risk from state surveillance, overpolicing, and other traditional civil liberties concerns.

There's a sign up form that will connect you with other people in your area working to stop facial surveillance, an organizers' toolkit with literature, media guides, and model legislation; and a list of bans, bills and moratoria already in place across America.

Law enforcement use of face recognition technology poses a profound threat to personal privacy, political and religious expression, and the fundamental freedom to go about our lives without having our movements and associations covertly monitored and analyzed.

This technology can be used for identifying or verifying the identity of an individual using photos or videos, and law enforcement and other government agencies can use it to conduct dragnet surveillance of entire neighborhoods. Face surveillance technology is also prone to error, implicating people for crimes they haven't committed.

About Face [EFF]