Here’s How Impeachment Obsession Is Allowing Big Tech to Build a China-Like Surveillance State

Lawmakers are too busy wrestling with matters related to President Donald Trump’s impeachment to address issues related to the government’s deployment of facial recognition technology.

Big tech is selling such technological know-how to police agencies and embedding it in smartphones while lawmakers remain distracted, Politico reported Monday. Other issues are also taking precedent, namely the death of one lawmaker who led efforts to regulate artificial intelligence. . .

“We don’t want any more money being used, no money used to expand what we have or to purchase any new ability to impact or use this technology,” GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio told Politico. “I’ve been all focused all on impeachment,” so working with Republicans on sticky parts of such a bill is difficult, he noted.

Meanwhile, San Francisco officials are taking matters into their own hands. The city’s Board of Supervisors voted 8-1 in May to make San Francisco the first American city to block police from using the tool.

Facial recognition technology is not without its supporters, who say it can be a useful tool to nab criminals. Authorities, for instance, used a similar piece of technology to identify a person who shot and killed several people in 2018 at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. (Read more from “Here’s How Impeachment Obsession Is Allowing Big Tech to Build a China-Like Surveillance State” HERE)

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