From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

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

This week, we're excited to bring back an episode from a few months ago with Cade Crockford,

director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Cade spoke to us about local efforts to push back against the growing use of facial recognition technology

by police and other government agencies.

When we spoke in July, the City Council of Somerville, Massachusetts had recently voted

to ban the municipal government's use of facial surveillance technology.

Since then, the movement to stop this invasive and inaccurate practice has grown.

Oakland and Berkeley, California followed San Francisco's lead in passing municipal bans on face surveillance.

In October, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a temporary ban on police departments using facial recognition with body cameras throughout the state.

Just last week, the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, passed its own ban.

Here's more from Cade on why these communities are saying no to face surveillance technology.

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 awesome step. We had a champion at the

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