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Feature The State of Maine has enacted what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describes as the strongest state facial-recognition law in the US amid growing concern over the unconstrained use of facial-recognition systems by the public and private sector.
The Maine bill, LD 1585 [PDF], forbids state officials from using facial-recognition technology, or entering into agreements with third parties to do so, except under a relatively limited set of circumstances having to do with serious crimes and searches of vehicle registration data. It imposes the sort of broad limitations that civil liberties advocacy groups have been advocating. Maine is showing the rest of the country what it looks like when we the people are in control of our civil rights and civil liberties, not tech companies that stand to profit from widespread government use of face surveillance technology,” said Michael Kebede, policy counsel at the ACLU of Maine, in a statement.