San Francisco: from facial recognition ban to AI surveillance laboratory

An in-depth report from The Standard documents how San Francisco — the first US city to ban police facial recognition in 2019 — has become one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the United States. The SFPD now operates 98 drones, 400 AI-powered ALPR cameras, and a real-time crime centre partly funded by private billionaires. Major crime categories fell 44% between 2023 and 2025, though experts caution the city is running an uncontrolled experiment with no governance framework commensurate with the scale of surveillance deployed.

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