BROOKLINE, Mass. (Dec. 12, 2019) – The town of Brookline overwhelmingly voted to ban government use of facial recognition technology in the city on Wednesday. The growing movement to prohibit the use of facial recognition at the state and local levels could hinder the operation of a growing national facial recognition network.
Brookline Town Meeting member Amy Hummel introduced a by-law (Article 25)ย banning all government use of facial recognition technology.
“Face surveillance technology poses unprecedented threats to civil liberties. This warrant article gives Brookline Town Meeting the opportunity to take action and protect fundamental rights … Without a ban on facial recognition, the technology is likely to become entrenched without meaningful public knowledge or input, and it will become increasingly difficult to legislate and regulate the longer it is unfettered.
The town voted 179-8 to approve the ban.
Brookline became the second Massachusetts city to ban facial recognition. Earlier this year, Somerville passed an ordinance prohibiting the technology. The city ofย Springfield is considering a similar ban. There are also bills moving through the Massachusetts state legislature to place a moratorium on facial recognition technology.
The ACLU of Massachusetts is aggressively pushing measures to limit government use of facial recognition and supported the Brookline ban. In a statement, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Program director Kade Crockford called it a matter of basic civil liberties.
“Peopleย should be able to walk around Brookline without worrying that governmentย agencies are keeping tabs on their every movement. For too long, faceย surveillance technology has gone unregulated, posing a serious threat to ourย basic civil rights and civil liberties. In the absence of state or nationalย action,ย municipal governments have taken the first steps towards sensibleย policy. We are grateful for Brooklineโs leadership to bring this technologyย under democraticย control.โ
The Brookline facial recognition ban is part of a broader nationwide movement to limit this invasive surveillance technology at the local and state level. San Francisco,ย Oakland, and Berkeley.ย have all prohibited government use of facial recognition technology.ย Portland, Oregonย isย considering similar bans, The California governor recentlyย signed a billย that imposes a 3-year ban on the use of the tech in conjunction with police body-worn cameras. The New York Assembly is consideringย a bill to ban facial recognition in schoolsย andย on police body cameras.
IMPACT ON FEDERAL PROGRAMS
Aย recent report revealedย that the federal government has turned state driversโ license photos into a giant facial recognition database, putting virtually every driver in America in a perpetual electronic police lineup. The revelations generated widespread outrage, but this story isnโt new. The federal government has been developingย a massive, nationwide facial recognition systemย for years.
The FBIย rolled out a nationwide facial-recognition programย in the fall of 2014, with the goal of building a giant biometric database with pictures provided by the states and corporate friends.
In 2016, the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law released โThe Perpetual Lineup,โ a massive report on law enforcement use of facial recognition technology in the U.S. You can read the complete report atย perpetuallineup.org. The organization conducted a year-long investigation and collected more than 15,000 pages of documents through more than 100 public records requests. The report paints a disturbing picture of intense cooperation between the federal government, and state and local law enforcement to develop a massive facial recognition database.
โFace recognition is a powerful technology that requires strict oversight. But those controls, by and large, donโt exist today,โ report co-authorย Clare Garvie said. โWith only a few exceptions, there are no laws governing police use of the technology, no standards ensuring its accuracy, and no systems checking for bias. Itโs a wild west.โ
There areย many technical and legal problemsย with facial recognition, including significant concerns about the accuracy of the technology, particularly when reading the facial features of minority populations. During a test run by the ACLU of Northern California,ย facial recognition misidentified 26 members of the California legislatureย as people in a database of arrest photos.
With facial recognition technology, police and other government officials have the capability to track individuals in real-time. These systems allow law enforcement agents to use video cameras and continually scan everybody who walks by. According to the report, several major police departments have expressed an interest in this type of real-time tracking. Documents revealed agencies in at least five major cities, including Los Angeles, either claimed to run real-time face recognition off of street cameras, bought technology with the capability, or expressed written interest in buying it.
In all likelihood, the federal government heavily involves itself in helping state and local agencies obtain this technology. The feds provide grant money to local law enforcement agencies for a vast array of surveillance gear, including ALPRs, stingray devices and drones. The federal government essentially encourages and funds a giant nationwide surveillance net and then taps into the information via fusion centers and the Information Sharing Environment (ISE).
Fusion centers were sold as a tool to combat terrorism, but that is not how they are being used. The ACLU pointed to aย bipartisan congressional reportย to demonstrate the true nature of government fusion centers: โThey havenโt contributed anything meaningful to counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they have largely served as police surveillance and information sharing nodes for law enforcement efforts targeting the frequent subjects of police attention: Black and brown people, immigrants, dissidents, and the poor.โ
Fusion centers operate within the broader ISE. According toย its website, the ISE โprovides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigatorsโฆhave mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.โ In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant.ย Known ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence which oversees 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. ISE utilizes these partnerships to collect and share data on the millions of unwitting people they track.
Reports that the Berkeley Police Department in cooperation with a federal fusion center deployed cameras equipped to surveil a “free speech” rally and Antifa counterprotests provided the first solid link between the federal government and local authorities in facial recognition surveillance.
In a nutshell, without state and local cooperation, the feds have a much more difficult time gathering information. Passage of local ordinances banning facial recognition eliminates one avenue for gathering facial recognition data. Simply put, data that doesnโt exist cannot be entered into federal databases.
- Usurpation: Weapon to Destroy Freedom - January 25, 2026
- Parchment barriers don’t stop tyranny - January 6, 2026
- Living Under the Consolidation the Founders Warned About - December 19, 2025