It's Hard to Ban Facial Recognition Tech in the iPhone Era

After San Francisco in May placed new controls, including a ban on facial recognition, on municipal surveillance, city employees began taking stock of what technology agencies already owned. They quickly learned that the city owned a lot of facial recognition technology--much of it in workers' pockets. City-issued iPhones equipped with Apple's signature unlock feature, Face ID, were now illegal--even if the feature was turned off, says Lee Hepner, an aide to supervisor Aaron Peskin, the member of the local Board of Supervisors who spearheaded the ban. Around the same time, police department staffers scurried to disable a facial recognition system for searching mug shots that was unknown to the public or Peskin's office. The department called South Carolina's DataWorks Plus and asked it to disable facial recognition software the city had acquired from the company, according to company vice president Todd Pastorini.