Many Facial-Recognition Systems Are Biased, Says U.S. Study

Civil liberties experts, however, warn that the technology -- which can be used to track people at a distance without their knowledge -- has the potential to lead to ubiquitous surveillance, chilling freedom of movement and speech. This year, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley in California and the Massachusetts communities Somerville and Brookline banned government use of the technology. "One false match can lead to missed flights, lengthy interrogations, watch list placements, tense police encounters, false arrests or worse," Jay Stanley, a policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. "Government agencies including the F.B.I., Customs and Border Protection and local law enforcement must immediately halt the deployment of this dystopian technology." The federal report is one of the largest studies of its kind.