Human rights group urges New York to ban police use of facial recognition

Facial recognition technology amplifies racist policing, threatens the right to protest and should be banned globally, Amnesty International said as it urged New York City to pass a ban on its use in mass surveillance by law enforcement. "Facial recognition risks being weaponised by law enforcement against marginalised communities around the world," said Matt Mahmoudi, AI and human rights researcher at Amnesty. "From New Delhi to New York, this invasive technology turns our identities against us and undermines human rights. "New Yorkers should be able to go out about their daily lives without being tracked by facial recognition. Other major cities across the US have already banned facial recognition, and New York must do the same." Albert Fox Cahn of New York's Urban Justice Centre, which is supporting Amnesty's Ban the Scan campaign, said: "Facial recognition is biased, broken, and antithetical to democracy.