In the summer of 2022, with a spike in violent crime hitting New Orleans, the city council voted to allow police to use facial-recognition software to track down suspects — a technology that the mayor, police and businesses supported as an effective, fair tool for identifying criminals quickly.

A year after the system went online, data show that the results have been almost exactly the opposite.

A historic settlement filed in court on Monday highlighted the power of Illinois' strong privacy law and will result in new nationwide restrictions on a controversial technology company infamous for selling access to the largest known database of facial images.

The deal permanently banning Clearview AI from providing most private entities with free or paid access to its database stems from a lawsuit that the ACLU and partners f in 2020, arguing that the company violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

Facing mounting bipartisan pressure, the Internal Revenue Service announced yesterday that it’s walking back plans to deploy facial recognition software to identify taxpayers.

The IRS has announced it will soon require people to use facial recognition technology to access parts of the agency’s website, and taxpayers are getting serious jitters.

Clearview AI has created a powerful facial recognition tool and marketed it to police departments and government agencies. The company has never disclosed the entities that have used its facial recognition software, but a confidential source provided BuzzFeed News with data that appeared to be a list of agencies and companies whose employees have tried or used its technology.

A new bill introduced in the Senate Tuesday would heavily curtail the use of facial recognition technology by individuals and private companies, and would ban them from selling biometric data, including pictures of people identified by facial recognition.

The National Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2020, cosponsored by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), would make it illegal for corporations to use facial recognition to identify people unless they obtain those people's consent and are carrying out facial recognition for a "valid business purpose."

Amazon is implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its artificial intelligence software Rekognition amid a growing backlash over the tech company’s ties to law enforcement.

WHY THIS QUESTION MATTERS:
In May 2019, San Francisco made headlines when it became the first U.S. city to ban police use of facial recognition technology. The technology analyzes human faces and matches them to an existing database to verify an individual's identity. Over the last decade, the facial recognition technology has become increasingly accessible for government entities, businesses, and private citizens alike. But as the technology has grown, so too have concerns of its use or misuse.

The southern Indian state of Telangana will use facial recognition software in local elections on Wednesday, authorities said, the first such use of the technology in the country despite growing concerns about privacy and surveillance.

Facial recognition software will be used to verify voters in 10 polling stations in the Medchal-Malkajgiri district to "reduce impersonation cases", the Telangana State Election Commission said in an online notification late last week.