Crossley: Cambridge Becomes Fourth City In The State To Ban Facial Recognition

Facial Recognition Curbing Surveillance — In this Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019 photo, a video surveillance camera hangs on a pole outside City Hall in Springfield, Mass. Some city councilors are pursuing a ban against government use of facial recognition technology in surveillance cameras in the city.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

January 24, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

Cambridge, Mass., became the fourth city in the state to ban facial recognition last week, joining Brookline, Somerville and Northampton. Callie Crossley, host of WGBH News’ Under The Radar joined Boston Public Radio on Friday to speak about why more cities need to beware the use of facial recognition due to racial bias.

"I'm very frightened out of my mind as I watch [facial recognition technology] be spread everywhere and accepted just as routine, when I know it doesn't work on dark skinned people like me and women," she said.

Studies have proven that facial recognition technology incorrectly identifies Asian and African-American faces 10 to 100 times more than Caucasians, Crossley noted.

"They train the AI with regard to the facial recognition on white men's images," she said. "So that's what [AI is] going to recognize, because that's what the artificial intelligence was trained to do."