From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

From so-called aggression detectors in public schools to license plate scanners on our streets,

surveillance technology is encroaching on every part of our lives. Regulations at the federal

level have been slow to materialize, but local governments are increasingly taking action.

Two American cities, Somerville, Massachusetts, and San Francisco, recently passed local laws

to ban the use of facial recognition technology.

So as local advocacy are best bet

for keeping the surveillance state at bay?

Today we're talking to Cade Crockford,

director of the Technology for Liberty program

at the ACLU of Massachusetts,

and a leading voice in the movement

to rein in surveillance technology.

Cade, incidentally, is also my main competitor for biggest soccer fan at the ACLU.

Cade, thanks very much for joining us. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me.

So I want to start off by talking about the major victory that you and your colleagues at the ACLU of

Massachusetts won recently.

Can you start out by telling us what happened in Somerville and why it's important?

Sure. At the end of June in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is a city right outside of Cambridge near Boston,

the city council unanimously voted to ban the municipal government's use of face surveillance technology,

and we became the second city, Somerville did after San Francisco, to take this pretty

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