Teaneck just banned facial recognition technology for police. Here's why
Isaiah McCall, NorthJersey.com
TEANECK — The Township Council has banned the use of facial recognition software by police in a unanimous vote, joining a nascent movement to banish a technology that has been criticized as potentially biased.
Even as private companies continue to create huge databases of images from social media, and facial recognition is employed for surveillance and airport passenger screening, a growing body of evidence shows that the algorithms do a poorer job of identifying women and Black and Asian faces.
In January, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal barred police statewide from using a facial recognition app from a company called Clearview AI, which The New York Times reported had amassed a database of billions of photos from sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The company licenses its product to police departments.