Despite MPD ban, facial recognition technology is still present in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system
Although the Milwaukee Police Department has banned the use of facial recognition technology, the tool reportedly remains present elsewhere in the city's broader criminal justice system. The ban on MPD does not appear to have removed the technology from the process that determines how people are charged, tried, or held.
Why this matters: A department ban sounds like a win. It is not the same as an actual ban. If facial recognition is still feeding into prosecutions, pretrial decisions, or evidence review through other agencies or partners, the policy is a label, not a limit. People in Milwaukee's courts can still be affected by a technology their city officially said it would not use. That gap between what a policy says and what actually happens is where rights get lost.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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