Should cities ban facial recognition technology?

Facial recognition technology is a powerful tool to help fight crime but several cities have chosen to ban its use citing concerns over privacy.

In the US, regulations are being implemented at a local city level:  San Francisco and Oakland in California and Somerville in the state of Massachusetts have all introduced bans, and Cambridge, also in Massachusetts, followed suit this month.

A recent new study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that algorithms misidentified African-American and Asian faces up to 100 times more frequently than white faces.

“While it is usually incorrect to make statements across algorithms, we found empirical evidence for the exis...