In October 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1215, the Body Camera Accountability Act, which imposes a 3-year moratorium on the use of face surveillance and other biometric surveillance technology with police body cameras and similar devices. The bill went into effect in January 2020.
The following year, NACDL and partners successfully opposed AB 2261, which would have created a legal framework for the denial of services using biased facial recognition. As part of this effort, NACDL collaborated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Media Justice, and the ACLU of Northern California on a webinar entitled The Path to Privacy: Stopping Face Surveillance in California. A recording of the webinar is available on EFF’s Facebook page.
In 2022, NACDL supported SB 1038, legislation introduced to ensure the continued state law protection of Californians’ civil rights against the use of biometric surveillance by law enforcement on officer-worn body cameras.
