Portland, Oregon unanimously adopted ordinances banning the use of facial recognition tech by city agencies, including the police, and by private businesses
The Portland, Oregon City Council today unanimously voted to adopt two of the strongest bans of facial recognition technologies …
The vote also sets up Portland as a bridge between local ordinances and state action — Maine would follow months later with the strongest statewide facial recognition law covering schools and most police work, suggesting the city-level template is already traveling upward.
First-order effects
Portland police and every other city agency must immediately halt facial recognition use, and businesses in the city face compliance obligations no other banning city had imposed on the private sector.
Second-order effects
Vendors selling facial recognition to governments lose one of the largest Pacific Northwest municipal markets outright, and cities drafting their own bans now face pressure from activists to match Portland's private-business coverage rather than the narrower government-only versions like Boston's.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, the movement graduates from city hall to statehouses — as it did with Maine's statewide law — forcing vendors to navigate a state-by-state patchwork where the strictest jurisdiction effectively sets the product requirements for whole regions.
The trend: US facial recognition restrictions are escalating from isolated city bans to comprehensive local-and-private prohibitions and then statewide statutes, with each new ordinance raising the ceiling on scope.
Portland city council just unanimously passed the most radical ban on facial recognition anywhere. I've been covering this thing since it was just an idea bouncing around city hall over a year ago. I'll be on it going forward, through implementation, too. https://onezero.medium.c…
This sounds great on paper, but who's actually going to enforce this when law enforcement inevitably violates these laws, and does it anyway? If only we had a police commission who could answer the call, that the Portland community actually trusted. https://twitter.com/...
Breaking: Portland passes the toughest ban on facial recognition in the US — it's now the only city to outlaw the technology's use in private businesses https://www.cnet.com/...
Yep. And that's not all. Amazon's top lobbyist sits on the board of @ITIFdc which pushed for Portland police to use facial recognition (since I reported this story, Amazon spent an additional $12K bringing their lobbying spending to $24K against the ban. https://onezero.medium.co…
Use of FRT ban for both state and non state actors in Portland, as it is not just state actors that carry out surveillance and discrimination. These are the kind of structural changes that are required to be made to ensure privacy of individuals. https://www.cnet.com/...
I hope to see this style legislation throughout the country. We don't need to let this out of the bottle. It could never be put back. If we've learned anything about our current authoritarian, I think it's that they can't be trusted with this kind of stuff. https://twitter.com/..…
Today, Portland is voting on what could be the strictest ban on facial recognition in the country: no public or private use allowed. Amazon has been trying for almost ten months to nip this legislation in the bud before it inspires other cities. https://www.vice.com/...
“No one should have something as private as their face photographed, stored, and sold to third parties for a profit. No one should be unfairly thrust into the criminal justice system because the tech algorithm misidentified an innocent person.” https://venturebeat.com/...
“All Portlanders are entitled to a city government that will not use technology with demonstrated racial and gender biases that endanger personal privacy,” Portland mayor Ted Wheeler said. https://twitter.com/...
The law “lets people sue noncompliant private entities for $1,000 per day for each day of violation or for damages sustained as a result of the violation, whichever is greater.” https://onezero.medium.com/...
Portland's mayor @tedwheeler said he hopes today's vote will inspire other cities to pass their own facial recognition bans, on both public and private use. https://www.cnet.com/...
EXCLUSIVE: Portland is now the first U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition tech inside privately owned places accessible to the public. The new law also gives people the right to sue and win damages for unlawful use of facial recognition. https://read.medium.com/Gc1gXV8